INFO: Command Line Switches for the Visual Studio Installer Bootstrapper (243350)

SUMMARY

The Visual Studio Installer (VSI) will only pass the q, l, and m switches to the Windows Installer engine when running the VSI-created Setup.exe program. In order to use the other switches, you must pass them directly to the Windows Installer .msi package using the Msiexec.exe service. Windows Installer public properties can be passed to the Windows Installer package from the command line of Setup.exe.

MORE INFORMATION

When you create a VSI package that also distributes the Windows Installer engine (which you do by setting the Build Type to Installer with Windows Installer Loader in the project Properties), you will generate a Setup.exe package in addition to the Windows Installer .msi package. The Setup.exe program will load the Windows Installer engine if it is not present on the computer prior to running the application's Setup.

The only command line options that the Setup.exe program can pass to the Windows Installer .msi package are the following:

/q - Run application installation in quiet mode
/l <log file name> - Create a Windows Installer logfile
/m - Generate a Systems Management Server (SMS) status .mif file

All other command line options are set by calling the Msiexec service directly. For example, an administrative installation:

   Msiexec /a e:\Mypackage.msi

REFERENCES

For a complete listing of the available Windows Installer command line switches and public properties, please see the "Command Line Options" topic in the Windows Installer Help, Msi.chm. This Help file is part of the Windows Installer SDK located at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/developer/sdk/wininst.asp