Appendix A: How To: InstallShield Express

Visual FoxPro 7.0 and 8.0 come with a special edition of InstallShield Express. This setup tool is the designated successor to the old VFP Setup Wizard from VFP 6 and earlier. Like its more fully featured siblings, InstallShield Express ‚ Visual FoxPro Limited Edition builds setup packages for Microsoft Windows Installer. This appendix takes you on a walk-through of building a complete setup package for a VFP application using InstallShield Express. It also explores the differences between the version of InstallShield Express that comes with VFP 7, the version that comes with VFP 8, and the full version of InstallShield Express available from InstallShield Corp.

What is InstallShield Express?

InstallShield Express (ISX) is a Windows Installer-based setup tool from InstallShield Corp. You might consider it the ‚“lite ‚½ version of InstallShield Corp. ‚ s Windows Installer-based product line. The other tool in this line is the more full-featured product called InstallShield Developer. InstallShield Corp. also offers a non-Windows Installer-based setup tool called InstallShield Professional. In late 2003, InstallShield combined the functionality of both Developer and Professional, along with other enhancements, into a single product called InstallShield DevStudio 9. InstallShield Express remains a separate product.

InstallShield Express ‚ Visual FoxPro Limited Edition (or ISX VFP LE for short) is a special, feature-limited edition of InstallShield Express distributed with Visual FoxPro. There are two versions of the Visual FoxPro Limited Edition product, the one that comes with VFP 7 and the one that comes with VFP 8. For convenience, we refer to the version that comes with Visual FoxPro 7.0 as ISX VFP7 LE and the version that comes with Visual FoxPro 8.0 as ISX VFP8 LE. Although both versions of ISX VFP LE are more limited than the full version of InstallShield Express on which they are based, the one that comes with VFP 8 is based on a more recent version of the full product. Table 1 provides an overview of the various versions of InstallShield Express since VFP 7 was released.

Table 1. There are several versions of InstallShield Express.

Product Name	InstallShield Version	VFP Version	Comments
InstallShield Express --Visual FoxPro Limited Edition	3.03	7.0	Several features are disabled ‚ cannot create upgrade paths or custom actions
InstallShield Express --Visual FoxPro Limited Edition	3.54	8.0	Can create upgrade paths, but many other features are still disabled
InstallShield Express	3.54	n/a	The latest version of the full product before version 4.0 was released
InstallShield Express	4.0 SP1	n/a	The latest version of the full product before version 5.0 was released
InstallShield Express	5.0	n/a	The newest version of the full product, released in October 2003