>>>>What about this? How about the VS Installer as an automation server? Hmmm? Consider the possiblilities there.
>>>
>>>What would control it? IOW, whose the client? A VBS script?
>>
>>Control from VFP or VB script or whatever you like. In VFP, it'd just take a small prg to do the work for you. Provided what functionality was exposed, theoretically, you could automate the whole process.
>
>And then compile and distribute that? Are there two different files, one that houses the VFP code, and one that houses the compressed distributables? Maybe this is all trivial, but it seems to me at first glance that an installer has to be somewhat of a self-contained product, because it does its job on the client side. It can't use COM interfaces, because it would have to include the dlls, extract them, register them, and then use them for the rest of the install. Since a lot of what an installer does is this sort of functionality anyway, now you have completely duplicated functionality in the distrib file. With the idea of automation from an install comes a lot of chicken and egg questions. Dig?

Erik,

Yeah, I dig, but I'm not sure that you understand what I was getting at.

First of all, there is no "chicken and the egg" problem. While it's true that in most cases a setup program is required, it's not the case here. It is perfectly possible to write an installation program that'll do what we need and that we can tailor to do so.

The installation of SP4 shows that this can be done. In order to install the service pack. MDAC 2.5 needed to be installed first. Now the SP setup program could've run this itself, but it didn't.

Where I think that the confusion arises is in the COM aspect of this. What I was proposing was that it would be nice if the VS Installer exposed the methods and attributes we need as an automation server. This would be strictly for the purpose of allowing us to automate the process of creating distribution disks. How this is done, whether it be from VFP or through VBScript, would be solely dependant on the developer. From a VFP standpoint, using this in conjunction with the Project object, would give us a very powerful tool in creating the necessary setup routine, further simplify this process for us.