Juggling Prerequisite Dependencies

[pfletch101]

I am building an installer for an Access 2010 database application. This will normally use the Access Runtime, but there is currently a problem because there are serious incompatibilities between compiled Access databases created under the SP1 version of the program and the Runtime (which Microsoft have not yet updated to SP1!). Basically, what I need to do is download and run the SP1 updater after installing the Runtime, if the former had not been previously installed. Ideally, I would also want to check that an already installed version of the Runtime had been updated to SP1, and install the update it if it hasn't been, but this is a much lower priority, since it should normally have happened automatically through Windows Update, and there doesn't appear to be a foolproof way to check on Access's "SP status" via the Registry.

I can't seem to find a way to "chain" the installation of pre-requisites so that prerequisite B is installed if and only if the installer has had to install prerequisite A. I am a novice user of the program, which I find to be excellent, and I am probably missing something very obvious. Please point me in the right direction.

[Daniel]

Hello and welcome to Advanced Installer forums,

Thank you for your interest in Advanced Installer.

In order to achieve this you can proceed as follows:
- Go to "Prerequisites" page and add the prerequisite A package as a pre-install prerequisite to your project.
- Add the prerequisite B package as a pre-install prerequisite after prerequisite A, from "Prerequisite Install Condition" tab enable "Install only if this prerequisite is being installed" option and from the combo box choose prerequisite A as install condition.
- Build and run your project.

Let us know if this helped.

All the best,
Daniel

[pfletch101]

I did try to do that, but had two problems:
1) I could find no way of specifying any conditions without having at least one Registry-based condition - not needed in this case.
2) Specifying a Registry-based condition that is always true and then specifying prequisite A in the "Install only...." dropdown, left prerequisite B ticked by default on the pre-install list when I ran the installer on a system where prerequisite A (and B) had been installed and prerequisite A was correctly unticked.

A related question: if Prequisite B has a Registry-based installation condition, will its installation depend on the values in the Registry after the Prerequisite A installation has completed, or is the Registry check only done at the beginning of the installation. If the latter, I just need to make the two installations dependent on the same (initial) Registry conditions, which is easy.

[Daniel]

Hello,

A related question: if Prequisite B has a Registry-based installation condition, will its installation depend on the values in the Registry after the Prerequisite A installation has completed, or is the Registry check only done at the beginning of the installation. If the latter, I just need to make the two installations dependent on the same (initial) Registry conditions, which is easy.

Please keep in mind that searches from prerequisites install conditions are performed early, before the prerequisites start. So, if your prerequisites are added both as pre-install prerequisites or as feature-based prerequisites, then all of your searches from prerequisites install conditions will be performed before the first prerequisite starts.

So, if you want to have two prerequisites packages with the same install conditions, then you can add both prerequisites as pre-install prerequisites or as feature-based prerequisite.

All the best,
Daniel

[pfletch101]

Thanks! That is what I have done, and it works well.