So, I’m attempting to upgrade an installation built with InstallShield 11.5, converting to the latest IS2009.
Things are clicking right along until a try and perform a build.
Fail.
Yep, that’s the “correct” spelling.
Searching online didn’t yield much. Basically, all the posts I could find indicated that the problem was with the length of an Icon name in the ShortCuts table, but that didn’t apply here.
I’d just added several chained MSI packages (that’s just about the only reason to bother upgrading, virtually everything else about IS2009 is identical to 11.5, at least superficially, but that’s another story), so I was guessing that that had something to do with it.
I went back and removed my chained MSI. Recompiled. Worked!
Hmm. So I started re-adding them one by one.
Eventually, I got the the Office2007PIA msi. These are the Programmability Interop Files for Office 2007 (basically they make it easy for .NET apps to talk to the COM interfaces in Office apps).
Fail.
After some headscratching, on a whim, I renamed the chained item (not the msi file itself, just the name of the item in InstallShield), and… back in business!
I had changed the name from Office2007PIA to O2007PIA.
Hmm, more experimenting and it looks like the limit is 9 characters.
This name appears to only be used internally, so it really doesn’t matter what it is.
I’m guessing this is an MSI bug, but IS should catch this sort of thing and prevent you from making this mistake. After all, that’s why you use it vs Orca, right? <sigh>
