"Mark Assousa" <masso***@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:uclwrYtPFHA.3596@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
> Hi,
>
> I'm having trouble finding the right news group for this posting so here
> goes...
>
> I am attempting to execute some special actions within an installation
> project for a standard .Net Windows application. I have a custom Installer
> class that needs to access a disk file installed during the installation
> in a directory relative to the application directory. The file name is
> known but I don't know how to access the target installation folder during
> the AfterInstall event of the Installer class. I'm certain this
> information is available, I just don't know where it is. Any suggestions?
>
> On a related note, I'm a little fuzzy on the linkage between an installer
> class library and the install project itself. It appears you do not
> explicitly instantiate the custom installer in code but reference the
> class name under a special action and the special action uses Reflection
> to locate and instantiate an instance of the class at install/uninstall
> time. Is that correct?
>
> Thanks in advance.

> Pass TARGETDIR into your custom action CustomActionData like this:
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vsintro7/html/vxgrfcustomactiondataproperty.asp
>
> You get it from the IDictionary item associated with name if you used /name.
>
> You should just pass it into the Install custom action. There's no practical
> difference between Install and AfterInstall, even though the names imply
> that one is at the beginning and one at the end.
>
> Visual Studio adds a shim Dll to your setup. Windows Installer calls this in
> a standard custom action way (as in the WI SDK) and the shim Dll then finds
> your assembly, uses reflection etc as you say.
>