06/25/10

Automatically Reflecting Version in Product Name

Often it’s convenient to include version number in the product name, for instance Cool Product 1.0 . But then, whenever there’s new version, the name needs to be corrected accordingly, to reflect increased version number. Can this be made automatically? This becomes especially desirable feature when installations are produced by some automated process, for example when each customer receives an individual installation.

To accomplish this, we need to create a custom action that will reach into the MSI database, fetch the version of the “main” executable, and append it to the product name. Here’s the script to do it, assuming that the name of the “main” executable is coolproduct.exe .

Set v = Database.OpenView("select Version from `File` WHERE `FileName` = ' coolproduct.exe'")

v.Execute

Set r = v.Fetch

Version = r.StringData(1)

OldPN = Session.Property("ProductName")

If right(OldPN, Len(Version))<> Version Then Session.Property("ProductName") = Session.Property("ProductName") & " " & Version

This custom action must be placed in execute sequence. It can also be placed in user sequence, if the dialogs are using ProductName property in titles and such.