Windows Installer Editor Reference
206
Chapter 7
Organizing Your Installation Into Releases
This chapter includes the following topics:
z
About Releases
on page 206
z
Customizing a Release
on page 211
z
Setting Build Options for a Release
on page 216
z
Adding Prerequisites to a Release
on page 221
z
Creating a Clean Build
on page 228
z
Creating Web-Based Installations With WebDeploy
on page 230
z
Setting Up Media for Distribution
on page 236
About Releases
Note
You can only create releases in a project file (.WSI). In any other file, the pages in the
Release Definition page group are fully or partially unavailable. An exception is the
Languages page.
See
About the Languages Page
on page 287.
You can create an installation that generates different installations for different releases
of your application. You do this by creating and customizing releases within the
installation. You can create releases that install different features, have different
properties, have different output formats, and support different platforms.
The Releases page lets you define multiple releases for an installation, edit releases, and
delete releases you have created. If you haven’t created additional releases for the
installation, the Releases page lists only one release: Default.
Example 1:
You want to have a standard and an evaluation edition for your application, and you
want to release both editions on CD and as Internet downloads. To accomplish this,
create four releases:
z
Standard edition on CD-ROM
z
Standard edition for the Internet
z
Evaluation edition on CD-ROM
z
Evaluation edition for the Internet
Example 2:
You want to create a single installation project (.WSI) that can produce installation files
for 32-bit, x64, and 64-bit Itanium platforms. To accomplish this, create three releases
and set the appropriate target platform for each one:
z
32-bit edition
