Authoring a Windows Installer patch

This tutorial will guide you step by step into the creation of a simple Windows Installer patch project from scratch and building it in order to obtain a MSP package. It is addressed to those who have previous experience in using the Advanced Installer application to create MSI packages but have no experience in creating patches.

Let's start from the project that we created in the Simple Installation tutorial. After the "Build and install" step, we have created our 1.0.0 MSI. Save it in a safe place.

Go to the "Product Details" page and increase the version in the "Product Version" field to 1.0.1. When you move to another page you are prompted about changing the Product Code. Answer No in order to be able to create a patch.

After modifying and building the project, we will have two MSI packages (one for the 1.0.0 version and one for the 1.0.1 version) and we want to create a patch that will upgrade an installed 1.0.0 "Long Story" to 1.0.1.

1. Create the project
2. Create Images
3. Build and install

Create the project

If Advanced Installer is not currently running, start it by double-clicking on the desktop icon or by selecting it from the "Start > All Programs > Advanced Installer" menu. When the application starts, you will be presented a dialog where you can choose the type of the project you want to create.

Select the "Patch" type and press the [ OK ] button. The new project has been created and from now on you will edit it.

Save the project by using the [ Save ] toolbar button and choose the file name and the destination folder. This will also be the folder where your patch package (MSP) will be created. Give it an appropriate name, "story-patch.aip" for this example.

Create Images

The most important step in creating a MSP package is creating the Upgraded and Target images.

Switch to the "Images" page by selecting it in the left-side panel.

Click on the [ New Upgraded... ] toolbar button, browse to the 1.0.1 version of the "Long Story" product and select the "story.msi" file. A Windows Installer dialog will briefly pop up while the Administrative Image is being extracted.

Click on the [ New Target... ] toolbar button, browse to where you have stored the 1.0.0 version of the "Long Story" product and select the "story.msi" file.

Build and install

Now that you have created the Upgraded and Target images, let's build the MSP patch package.

First you need to make sure that the patch respects the Patch Rules.

Click on the [ Build ] toolbar button and a "Build Project" dialog will appear showing you the build evolution.

The Windows Installer patches are build using the MsiMsp tool. Read more in Tools.

Once the build is complete, click on the [ Run ] toolbar button. The setup wizard will appear. Press the [ Repair ] button to have your existing installation patched

You must have the version 1.0.0 of the product installed in order to be able to patch it with this MSP.

Congratulations! You have created your first Advanced Installer MSP patch package. By default, the patched "story.txt" file is installed in "C:\Program Files\Story Teller\Long Story". Browse to that folder in Windows Explorer to check.

The End

This concludes our tutorial.