Adding command line Installer help to MSI

Question

I've created an MSI that accepts several parameters in as values through the command line install.

Is there a way to include documentation in an MSI so when a user executes the MSI from the command line they can see information that I created on the custom parameters?

For example "Myproject.msi /?" would display the allowable parameters and a brief description.

Answer 1

Probably not the answer you're looking for, but the quickest way might be to wrap it in a batch file that responded to the appropriate switches.

Answer 2

Say that you allow users to pass the value MY_PARAM to your install, which makes the command line look like this:

msiexec /i yourapp.msi MY_PARAM=whatever

You could put a dialog in the UI sequence, which includes whatever documentation pertains to the use of the MY_PARAM property, and make the appearance of the dialog conditional on the property being set.

You can repeat that for however many parameters you're potentially interested in. And you can dump your documentation into ScrollableText controls on those dialogs, which means it can be long if it needs to be, and you can do some formatting.