Hi Chris,
But I do not understand how AI organizes/creates these components, as the members are somehow mixed.
Advanced Installer generates components based on
Microsoft recommendations.
But these lng files have nothing to do with the updater.exe, (except they aree in the same (destination) folder), so why does AI put them together? And why is e.g. Debug.exe.manifest as well in that component?
The ".lng" and ".manifest" extensions do not require separate components, so they are grouped in a single component. The organization is done based on file type and folder location.
"You just need to set the same GUID for all your files' components in this case as well"
"just"?? This seems to be a lot of work, searching in each of the 5 projects each of the 20 components and enter for each file the same GUID. and if a file is in a component name after another file, it is hard to find.
Unfortunately this is how Windows Installer handles shared resources. It's usually best to determine shared resources from the start and configure them appropriately for each new product. If you already have multiple products which are not configured correctly, perhaps it would be better if each product uses it's own set of shared files.
I'm afraid that there isn't a simpler approach for this.
And some of the files are not removed, although they have a different GUID in different projects.
Why is this working for some files and for some not?
Most likely they are not removed for other reasons. To determine the exact cause you can try
creating an uninstall log.
Can I create for each file set that is common a new feature, and then somehow import these features to the projects they are in as well.
No, I'm afraid that this is not possible.
Regards,
Cosmin