Usage of the Instance Feature without UI

[bkimp]

Hi,

we're currently evaluating the Advanced Installer for deploying our products to our customers. One of the most interesting Features of the Product is its ability to support multiple instances of the same product. This would allow our customers for example to have a testing and a productive installation of our product on their machines.

We plan to implement our own distribution system, to bring the updates to the client machine (the Automatic Update mechanism integrated to the Advanced Installer does not match our needs). This system contains a windows service which should start the setup of the new product version without ui. The bootstrapper, which seems to manage the multiple instances, shows an ui to ask the user which instance he wants to work with.

Our problem is, that we have found no way to skip this dialog and to choose the Instance by a commandline parameter. The instancing feature is for us the only reason to choose the Enterprise instead of the Professional Edition.

It would be very nice if someone can give us a tip how to solve this problem.


Greetings from Germany,

Bastian

[GabrielBarbu]

Hello Bastian and welcome to Advanced Installer Forums,

Thank you for your interest in Advanced Installer.
Unfortunately this behavior is not yet supported. However I have now added this feature on our TODO list and will be implemented in a future version of Advanced Installer.

Please let us know if there is anything else we can assist you with.

Best regards,
Gabriel

[rn-pro]

Hello,

Is this feature implemented in the newest version of Advanced-Installer?

Thank you very much,
Razvan

[mihai.petcu]

Hi Razvan,

No, actually the command lines for Multiple Instances will be available in the 8.4 release, which will be in a couple of months.

All the best,
Mihai

[rn-pro]

Hi Mihai,

I found this older post from us from the last year but I couldn't find any documentation which shows the command lines options for multiple instances.

No, actually the command lines for Multiple Instances will be available in the 8.4 release

Were these improvements implemented? And if so could you please give us a link which explains how could we use them?

Thank you very much,
rn-pro

[mihai.petcu]

Hi Razvan,

Our development team implemented this multiple instances command line.

All the best,
Mihai

[rn-pro]

Hi Mihai,

Thank you for your link.

...The bootstrapper, which seems to manage the multiple instances, shows an ui to ask the user which instance he wants to work with.

Our problem is, that we have found no way to skip this dialog and to choose the Instance by a commandline parameter. The instancing feature is for us the only reason to choose the Enterprise instead of the Professional Edition.

I thought here it's all about the bootstrapper command line .
Maybe in a future release .

Thank you very much,
rn-pro

[mihai.petcu]

Hello Razvan,

To install a new instance you can use the following command line:

Code: Select all

YourSetup.exe TRANSFORMS=:#1.mst MSINEWINSTANCE=1

where #1 is the instance name defined in your project.

To upgrade an installed instance:

Code: Select all

YourSetup.exe /n {02484BC7-8E53-443E-870A-8EEAB3CD4732} REINSTALL=ALL REINSTALLMODE=vomus

where {02484BC7-8E53-443E-870A-8EEAB3CD4732} is the instance product code.

These are .MSI command line applied through the bootstrapper thus for maintenance you can try:

Code: Select all

YourSetup.exe /i {02484BC7-8E53-443E-870A-8EEAB3CD4732}

This was not documented in our user guide but I added the task on our technical writing TODO list.

All the best,
Mihai