I’m trying to automate the building of an MSI file using InstallShield’s “Standalone Build Manager” via MSBuild, and one nicety I was hoping to implement was integrating the output of the InstallShield build log into the results of MSBuild.

Originally, I’d used an MSBuild EXEC task to fire up ISCmdBld.exe to perform the build, which works just fine, but which writes the log file to a more or less arbitrary location within the InstallShield project folder structure.

After a bit of Googling, I noticed that the Microsoft.SDC.Tasks MSBuild Extension Library had an InstallShield task as a part of it. Great! Just use that to perform the compilation, and I’m all set!

Unfortunately, that was not quite the case.

Once I’d downloaded the files, extracted them to the proper locations, and modified the Microsoft.Sdc.Common.Tasks file to point to the right place, I was still getting an error when I attempted a build:

Message              = Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

After some investigation, including browsing the source on the codeplex site, I figured out at least part of the problem:

        protected override void InternalExecute()
        {
            #region Execute code

            Directory.CreateDirectory(buildpath);

            RegistryKey installShieldKey = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(@"SOFTWARE\InstallShield\Developer\7.0");

The registry subkey referenced in the task points to an InstallShield 7 key, and I’m using IS 2009. <Sigh>

At this point, I’m back to using the EXEC task directly. Not optimal, but it does work.