Since my next job will probably involve a lot of installshield scripting could you point me to some handy online resources ?
InstallShield's own KnowledgeBase:
http://support.installshield.com/kb/
Lots of cool scripts and info here:
http://www.installsite.org/
A basic understanding of the way IS works is needed to get the most out of these sites. The best thing to do is mess around with the development environment, hack up some scripts yourself, and see what happens. Once you're comfortable with that, you can start messing with the stuff at installsite.
For me, the single most important tool I've ever used in relation to InstallShield has actually been Powerquest's
Drive Image product. Here's how I use it:
I have my main development computer,
and a test computer. The test computer is strictly for testing my installs. The test computer has two disk drives, C: and D:. Drive D: contains the DriveImage program and a bunch of images. The images are things like:
- Windows 95 clean installation.
- Windows 98 retail clean installation.
- Windows 98 SE clean installation.
- Windows 98 SE with IE 6 installed.
- Windows NT 4 clean installation.
- Windows NT 4 with Internet Information Server installed.
(etc...)
Drive C is the boot drive. Whenever I create an image like the ones above, I make sure it's dual-boot to DOS. So I can boot the system, drop to DOS, go to D:, run DriveImage, and put another image onto the C: drive. Reboot, and it's a clean fresh install of that version of the OS.
I can run my installer against that version of the OS and see if it really included everything that it needed to include, and did everything it needed to do. Far too often, an installer doesn't include enough DLL files and such, and therefore fails on some in-the-field systems. Testing against a pure version of the OS goes a long way towards making sure your installer really works.
This system also allows for very fast testing across multiple platforms. The image restore only takes a couple of minutes, then boom, you're testing in the next OS on your list. Very slick.