From MSI to WiX, Part 6 - Customizing installation using Custom Tables

Few questions on Custom Tables

Aleksey Timohin — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:04:56 GMT

1) Following seems not clear to me:

> Now, instead of passing Key1, Key2, and Key3

> in the command line we need to pass just one parameter -

> ENVIRONMENT, which will be used in order to determine

> which set of data to use during installation to update

> the content of the configuration file.

What value should be defined for ENVIRONMENT to work?

msiexec Setup.msi ENVIRONMENT = ????

or maybe it will be enough just specify this property?

msiexec Setup.msi ENVIRONMENT

2) Can Custom Tables be used to store values that user has enetered during install?

p.s. thank you for great articles!

re: From MSI to WiX, Part 6 - Customizing installation using Custom Tables

Alex Shevchuk — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:33:30 GMT

ENVIRONMENT variable should be set to one of the values in Environment column of custom table, ie. Dev or Test:

msiexec /i Setup.msi ENVIRONMENT=Dev

Answer for second question is No. It is possible to change values in custom table during install, but these changes won't be saved in actual msi. To store values entered during install, usually these values persisted in the registry during fresh install and retrieved from registry during maintenance/uninstall.

re: From MSI to WiX, Part 6 - Customizing installation using Custom Tables

Aleksey Timohin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:22:54 GMT

Thank you for fast answer.

Custom Tables became clearer for me.