Settings from a configuration file for InstallShield

Question

I am new to InstallShield and i am trying to create my first installer. I have (i think) a couple of basic requirements that i am finding hard to obtain information one:

1. Is there a way i can create a configuration file from which the installer reads information at the time of installation? These settings are unknown at the time of creation of the installer, and hence i cannot provide them. This needs to be a configuration file so that the values can be easily changed.
2. Is there a way for me to copy files that i know are present on the user's system, but which are not part of the installation files, to a specified location?

Answer 1

1. InstallShield has both the "INI File Changes" view, and the "XML File Changes" view. They both have basically the same goal -- to allow you to create/modify/remove settings data at run-time; one for INI formatted files, the other for XML. The XML support is impressive -- you can do XPath expressions, and all the values can be localized. If you don't know the values you want to use at the time of creation of the installer, you can represent the values with properties, and then populate the properties at run-time. Between the two, I recommend using the XML File Changes.

2. Sure, this is more of an MSI question than an InstallShield question. You would reference the files you want to manipulate using the paths in the Directory table. If you don't know exactly the names of the files, you could use the "System Search" capability in InstallShield to search for the file or Registry entry and then put that value in a property.

Answer 2

I found a couple of great articles on how to read configuration files at the time of installation - 1 and 2. These pretty much answer exactly what i wanted for the first part of the question.

Answer 3

Dear Sir,

I am new to Install Shield, and i have a really critical requirement. In between the installation steps, the installer should run a clearcase command in the backend and then that command output should be given as an input to the next installer panel.

To be more specific, i have to give the user to select a ClearCase storage location of his choice. For this, i need to run "cleartool lsstgloc" command in the back end. This command retrieves a list of available storage locations. I should read this list and show to user in the next panel, from where he can chose the storage location of his choice.

How is this possible using installshield. Please help me.