Possible to change a feature's visibility based on a condition?

[Kevin P. Fleming]

I have a feature in my MSI that installs MSDE (using some CAs that use MSIEXEC
to do the dirty work). However, if the user decides not to install MSDE during
their initial installation, they can't add it later because in
Maintenance/Repair/etc. mode SOURCEDIR is not set and there is no way for the CA
to know where to find the MSDE MSI to do the actual installation.

That's fine by me, I could always tell my users to just do a complete
remove/reinstall to get MSDE added. However, that means I'd prefer to not have
the MSDE Feature visible during Maintenance mode.

Is there any way to modify the Feature's "Display" setting in the Feature table
at run time? If so, I could just set it to 0 (zero) if "Installed" is true, and
the Feature would disappear.

[Luke S]

I dont think that it is possible to chagned the display level for a feature
by using a property, but you could create two feature selection dialogs, and
have a property that will show the user the correct dialog according to
their selection.

"Kevin P. Fleming" <ke...@labsysgrp.com> wrote in message
news:#TD$luLHDH...@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...

[Chris Gouge [MSFT]]

You can't use a condition to directly affect the Display value of a feature, but
the "Condition" table can be used to disable the feature by setting its "level"
value to 0.

You should be aware, however, that enabling and disabling features can easily
orphan resources if you are not careful. If the feature is installed, it should
never be disabled on uninstall. You can find more information about this in the
MSI documentation.

-Chris Gouge
Microsoft Windows Installer Team

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Please do not send email directly to this alias. This alias is for newsgroup
purposes only.

MSI FAQ:
<http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/community/centers/management/msi_faq.asp>

"Luke S" <sur...@ca.com> wrote in message
news:OyyIe3YH...@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...

[Kevin P. Fleming]

Luke S wrote:

> I dont think that it is possible to chagned the display level for a feature
> by using a property, but you could create two feature selection dialogs, and
> have a property that will show the user the correct dialog according to
> their selection.
>

I'd thought of that as well, but I can't think of a simple way for the
"alternate" dialog to filter out the desired feature either. I guess I'll just
have to live with the feature still being shown. This means the user will be
able to _try_ to remove that feature, but it won't actually accomplish anything.

[mgama]

What if you used the Condition Table, setting the Level of the feature to be
zero? That should hide it from the feature selection dialog.

"Kevin P. Fleming" <ke...@labsysgrp.com> wrote in message

news:Oz7H5qjH...@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...

[Kevin P. Fleming]

mgama wrote:

> What if you used the Condition Table, setting the Level of the feature to be
> zero? That should hide it from the feature selection dialog.
>
>

Chris' response from earlier in the thread scared me off of doing that... it
could cause problems during an actual removal and I'm not willing to expose
myself to that at this point.

[a.n.o.n.y.m....@gmail.com]

There's a great thread on this subject at the URL below, where I've also posted an alternate solution:

http://community.flexerasoftware.com/showthread.php?172240-Hide-Feature-in-Basic-MSI-during-runtime&p=493121#post493121

Thanks,
Christopher