Hi,
We were using InstallShield 2015 SP2 MSI project which creates .MSI installer package on release build. Since our application was using Visual Studio 2008 for development, we included the required "Merge Modules" available in "Application Data->Redistributabes" section in the MSI project. The installer package creation and the built packages were working fine on the target platform (e.g. Windows 7 and Windows 10).
We have recently ported our application to use the latest version of Visual Studio 2022. We have also upgraded the InstallShield projects from version 2015 SP2 to 2023 R1, which includes several new features and improvements.
Note:
Microsoft has deprecated the use of merge modules for Visual C++ Redistributable files in Visual Studio 2019 and later. This is because merge modules cannot be updated by Windows Update, which means that applications that use merge modules may not be able to take advantage of security or bug fixes that are released for the redistributable files.
Instead, Microsoft recommends using central deployment of the Visual C++ Redistributable package. Central deployment installs the redistributable files in the %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\ folder for use by all applications and users.
When I opened our InstallShield 2023 R1 MSI project and included the "Microsoft Visual C++ 2022 Redistributable Package (x64/x86)" available in "Application Data->Redistributabes" section as "InstallShield prerequisites" and run the build, the build failed with following error:
ISDEV : error -7067: Your project contains InstallShield prerequisites. A Setup.exe setup launcher is required if you are building a release that includes InstallShield prerequisites. Change your release settings to build Setup.exe, or remove the prerequisites from your project.I had to change "Media->Releases->Release 1->setup.exe->setup launcher->yes" to make the build compile without error, but it is creating a setup.exe file instead of .MSI installer file.
Questions/Help:
- Is setup.exe inclusion or creation in "release build" mandatory to include the InstallShield prerequisites?
- We were shipping .MSI installer package created in the release build to our customers till now. Is there a way to continue to do whilst adding the "Microsoft Visual C++ 2022 Redistributable Package (x64/x86)" redistributables to .MSI installer package without creation of setup.exe?
Regards
Sridhar
