Question

I am refactoring an old installshield application and I need to perform a action that calls a function from a custom dll. Unfortunately the function that this action performs depends on another custom dll. So my question is:”Is it possible to have a custom dll depend on another custom dll and if so how?”

When I try to run the installer it crashes with the error “Setup was interrupted before being complete…” Then I copied the second custom dll to a folder that I added to PATH and everything went fine. Of course I can not expect my customer to do that by hand.

I am using Installshield 2008 but I believe the answer to my question will be the same for all versions.

EDIT: as maybe my question is not clear enough I will give example:
Let’s say I have a.dll that has a function:

UINT __stdcall
PerformAction(MSIHANDLE hInstall)    // IN
{
  ...
  help();
  ...
}

help() is defined in b.dll. Now when I create a new action I set it’s dll to be a.dll and it’s function name to be PerformAction but there is no way to indicate this depends on b.dll
When I copy b.dll to a folder included to PATH the installer works ok but if I don’t it fails.

Answer 1

The easiest InstallShield approach here is to use support files instead of or in addition to binary table entries. Windows Installer will only extract a single DLL for a custom action, but if you reference a file in SUPPORTDIR, it can use more than one.