Hi,
Could you be kind enough to advise me how to have the "satellite" project's Start Menu links grouped in the Windows Start Menu - in your example aip "Suite Installation".
The shortcuts from the Start Menu are always displayed under a single folder, subfolders are not allowed under those folders.
When you add a shortcut under the "Application Shortcut Folder" from the "Files and Folders" page of your project, the path is taken from the "Application shortcut folder" field from the "Install Parameters" page.
If you want to have all the shortcuts grouped under the same folder, you can set the same Publisher name for all the projects in the "Product Details" page and also set the shortcut folder's path to "[ProgramMenuFolder][Manufacturer]".
Or, for example, if you set that path to "[ProgramMenuFolder][Manufacturer]\[ProductName]", the shortcut will be installed to the "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Publisher\Product Name", but it will still be displayed under the Publisher's name in the Start Menu.
One stumbling block I have is that each of the projects that make up the suit have a large number of references to the same dll's. These would add approx 20 meg to each projects aip. Ideally each aip would check for the existence of a dll residing in a common folder and then add it to the GAC. If the dll file was not in the common folder then the aip would download it and process it accordingly.
I'm afraid that I do not fully understand this scenario. Are those DLL files common to all the projects or each project has its own set of DLL files?
The "
Merge Module" feature may help you with this. In the "
Merge Modules and DLL Registration" thread you can read how the merge modules work.
Best regards,
Eusebiu