ISPro 6.x Update Sample Project

In order to modify an existing InstallShield Professional 6.x setup project so that it installs an updated version of your product over a previous version that was installed by a 6.x setup, do the following:

Open the 6.x project in the InstallShield Professional 7.0 IDE, which will prompt you to covert the project to the new 7.0 format (and save a backup copy).

After the project has been converted and opened in the IDE, from the Project menu, select Settings. The Project Settings property sheet opens.

Click the Updates tab. The Updates property page gets focus.

In the Updates property page, check the 'Show update UI when appropriate' check box. (Note that this check box is disabled if the Maintenance property page's No Uninstall Or Maintenance option button is selected.)

You must also specify a version number for your product update in the Project Settings property sheet's Application page (see the online Help for more information about product version numbers in InstallShield Professional):

From the Project menu, select Settings. The Project Settings property sheet opens.

In the Project Settings property sheet, click the Application tab. The Application property page gets focus.

In the Application property page's Product Version combo box, type a version number (the version number entered for this sample is '2.00.321').

You must also select to build a differential media:

In the Media pane, right-click the desired media.

Select Properties from the popup menu to open the media property sheet.

Click the media property sheet's Update tab.

In the Update property page, select the Non-Differential Media option button (leave the edit field blank, so that the update can be applied to all earlier versions of your product).

The ISPro 6.x Update sample project installs an updated version of a product over a previous version that was installed by an InstallShield Professional 6.31 setup. Other than following the instructions in the Overview section above, the only modifications made were to the new OnSetUpdateMode event, which was inserted into the script. The modifications begin on line 184 of Setup.rul. Since we are updating an application that was installed by a previous version of InstallShield (which did not record version numbers of applications), the InstallShield variable IFX_INSTALLED_VERSION will be empty, and VERSION_COMPARE_RESULT_NOT_INSTALLED will be returned by VerProductCompareVersions. Therefore, the value of IFX_INSTALLED_VERSION here has been changed based on application-specific version information determined by this script. That is, if the value of IFX_INSTALLED_VERSION is null, this must mean that either the product is not already installed, or it is installed but was installed by an earlier (pre-7.0) version of InstallShield. So in that case, we check to see if one of our sample application's files, 'Sampler.exe,' is already installed, and if so, what this binary file's version number is. After retrieving Sampler.exe's version number, we then set the value of IFX_INSTALLED_VERSION to this version number, so that if this installed file's version is lower than the current Product Version (which was set to '2.00.321' as detailed in the Overview section above), the setup will then display the appropriate Update UI and will update the installed version of our application.

For backward compatibly, the InstallShield Professional 7.0 runtime will not use the Product Version defined in the Application tab of the Project Settings property sheet if a string table entry with the identifier 'PRODUCT_VERSION' is defined in the String Table portion of the IDE Resource window. In this case, the default value of IFX_PRODUCT_VERSION (which is compared to the value of IFX_INSTALLED_VERSION in order to determine if the setup should display Update UI) is instead set to the value of the PRODUCT_VERSION string table entry. Therefore, if you want the InstallShield runtime to use the Product Version number you set in Application tab of the Project Settings property sheet, you must delete the PRODUCT_VERSION string table entry from your project if one exists (as was done for this sample project).

The default script code calls the OnUpdateUIBefore or OnUpdateUIAfter event handler functions only when the 'Show update UI when appropriate' check box in the Updates tab of the Project Settings property sheet is checked (and when appropriate as determined by the OnSetUpdateMode and OnShowUI event handlers). If this check is unchecked, the default script code never calls the OnUpdateUIBefore or OnUpdateUIAfter event handler functions.