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

Chapter 8: Organizing Files for Your Installation
Including Redistributables in Your Installation
prerequisites. In addition, these editions include a merge module project type, which you can use to create your own
merge modules.
Adding InstallShield Prerequisites, Merge Modules, and Objects to Projects
Two types of redistributables—merge modules and objects—must be associated with a feature in order to
be installed. You can associate a single merge module or object with as many features or subfeatures as
needed.
When you add an InstallShield prerequisite to a project, it is not associated with any feature by default,
and it is called a setup prerequisite, since it is run before your main installation runs. If appropriate, you
can associate an InstallShield prerequisite with one more features that are currently in your project.
Task To add an InstallShield prerequisite, merge module, or object to a project:
1. In the View List under Specify Application Data, click Redistributables.
2. Select the check box in front of the redistributable that you want to add. If you select an object, the
associated wizard opens to guide you through the customization process.
3. For a merge module or an object: In the Conditional Installation pane, select the check box for
each feature that should contain this redistributable.
If you want to associate a prerequisite with a feature: In the Conditional Installation pane, select
the check box for each feature that should contain this prerequisite. If you do not want to associate
the prerequisite with a feature, leave the Install before feature selection check box selected.
This check box is selected by default when you add an InstallShield prerequisite to a project.
Tip: The right pane in the Redistributables view shows details about the merge module, object, or InstallShield prerequisite
that is selected in the list of available redistributables. Review this details pane to find out information such as which files a
redistributable installs. You can hide or show the details pane by clicking the Show Details button in this view.
Note: If Needs to be downloaded is specified in the Location column for the InstallShield prerequisite that you added to
your project, that prerequisite is not installed on your computer. You can download the prerequisite from the Internet to
your computer if you would like to include it in your project. If you build a release without first downloading one or more
required prerequisites, and if you specify that the prerequisites should be extracted from Setup.exe or copied from the
source media (instead of being downloaded from the Web to the end user’s computer), one or more build errors may be
generated. To eliminate the build errors, remove the prerequisite from your project, download it to your computer, or
change the InstallShield prerequisites location for the release to the download option; then rebuild the release.
Obtaining InstallShield Prerequisites and Objects
Note that some of the InstallShield prerequisites and objects are not installed with InstallShield. You
may need to download them. For more information, see Obtaining Updates for InstallShield.
172 ISE-1800-UG01 InstallShield 2012 Express Edition User Guide