InstallShield 2012 Express Edition User Guide - Knowledge Base ...

Chapter 2: Getting Started
Converting or Importing Visual Studio Projects into InstallShield Projects
Edition: InstallShield Premier Edition and InstallShield Professional Edition include the InstallShield Prerequisite Editor, a
tool that enables you to define custom InstallShield prerequisites and to edit settings for any existing InstallShield
prerequisites. If you have either one of these editions of InstallShield, you would be able to create your own InstallShield
prerequisites that would be launched during your product’s installation.
In addition, InstallShield Premier Edition and InstallShield Professional Edition enable you to set up release flags to build
different versions of an installation—such as Evaluation, Debug, Standard, and Advanced—from a single project. These
editions let you include and exclude InstallShield prerequisites at build time, depending on the release flags that you have
selected. For example, if you are creating a debug version of your product and you do not want to include some of the
InstallShield prerequisites in the build, you can assign a release flag to the appropriate InstallShield prerequisites and then
specify which release flags to include in the release.
User-Interface Tasks
The import and conversion processes do not incorporate the dialogs from a Visual Studio project into
the InstallShield project. Once you have imported or converted your project, you can use the Dialogs
view in InstallShield to configure settings for the dialogs in your project.
Language Tasks
If you imported a Visual Studio project into an InstallShield project and the following conditions exist,
InstallShield replaces the existing string entry values in your project with default string entry values for
the language of your Visual Studio project:
• You indicate in the Visual Studio Deployment Project Wizard that you would like to import the
language of the Visual Studio project.
• The language of your Visual Studio project does not match the language in your InstallShield
project. (In Visual Studio, the Localization property indicates the project’s language.)
For example, if you indicate in the Visual Studio Deployment Project Wizard that you would like to
import the language of the Visual Studio project, if the language of your InstallShield project is Spanish,
and if the language of your Visual Studio project is German, InstallShield replaces the Spanish run-time
strings in your project with the default German translations. Thus, if you edit a string entry value by
revising a setting such as the Publisher setting in the General Information view, and then you indicate in
the wizard that you want to import the language of a Visual Studio project, InstallShield overwrites the
value of the Publisher setting—as well as values for other settings—with the default German string entry
values.
Therefore, if you change the project language while importing your Visual Studio project, review the
settings in the General Information view and the Text and Messages view, and modify the string entry
values if appropriate.
.NET Installer Class Tasks
If your Visual Studio project includes a .NET installer class custom action, InstallShield configures the
.NET installer class information for the .NET assembly during the conversion process. (InstallShield
selects the Installer Class check box on the COM & .NET settings tab of the File Properties dialog box to
indicate that the assembly’s Install, Commit, Rollback, and Uninstall methods will be called at the
appropriate times at run time.) InstallShield does not include support for the Condition property of a
.NET installer class custom action in Visual Studio. Therefore, if your Visual Studio project contains a
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