Referencing a DIM in a Basic MSI Project Tutorial

InstallShield 2009

A DIM is an XML-format manifest that contains information about files and other data that will ultimately be included in an installation. In the collaborative model of installation authoring, which provides a solution enabling collaboration between application developers and installation developers, application developers create the DIMs. Each DIM can then be referenced by the installation developer in a Basic MSI project using InstallShield and consumed during the build of the installation itself.

Project

The following project types support DIM references:

Basic MSI

Merge Module

Tutorial Overview

This tutorial covers the following information about referencing a DIM in a Basic MSI project:

Adding a DIM Reference to a Basic MSI Project

Adding a DIM Reference Using the Setup Design View

Adding a DIM Reference Using the DIM References View

Reviewing the Contents of a Referenced DIM

Building and Running the Installation

Objective

The main objective of this tutorial is to add and configure a DIM reference in a Basic MSI project using InstallShield.

Audience

The intended audience for this tutorial is installation developers who will reference DIMs (created by application developers) in a Basic MSI project before building an installation using InstallShield. Some knowledge of creating and building projects using InstallShield is assumed.

Tutorial Files

Sample DIMs are included in the Samples subfolder within the InstallShield Program Files folder. The default installation location is C:\Program Files\InstallShield\2009\Samples\WindowsInstaller\DIMReferenceTutorial.

Sample project files referenced in the tutorial (such as Othello.ism) are included in the Samples subfolder within the InstallShield Program Files folder. The default installation location is C:\Program Files\InstallShield\2009\Samples\WindowsInstaller\Basic Installation Project.