Re: uninstalling TortoiseOverlay

teekaysoh_at_gmail.com wrote:
> According to the Dumentation.exe, the tortoise client's installer
> "must not deinstall" TortoiseOverlay:
>
> '''
> If you have a non-msi installer, you can call the msi installer
> like this:
> msiexec /i TortoiseOverlays-1.0.0.XXXX-win32.msi /qn /norestart
> But in that case, you also must not deinstall it when your client
> gets
> deinstalled.
> '''
>
> I am not familiar with msi installer, but doesn't the reference
> counting take care of that?
>

Reference counting is done by module, not by package. It's not possible
to install a package (an msi) twice.
That means, reference counting only works for the merge module, not the
msi itself.

> The problem I see here is that the users will need to manually
> deinstall TortoiseOverlay (assuming there's only one tortoise client
> using TortoiseOverlay), in order to make room for other tortoise
> clients that do not use TortoiseOverlay.

The msi installer adds an entry in the 'software' panel. So users can
uninstall it manually without problems.

The best way to handle this is to create a real msi installer for your
application and use the TortoiseOverlays merge module to install the
overlay handler.
I know that many people like to use 'easier' installers than msi, but MS
requires msi installers for all applications now anyway if they want the
'works on Vista' certificate.

I also know that using the msi installer for TortoiseOverlays is not an
ideal solution, but there's nothing we can do to improve it for those
applications not using an msi installer.

What you could do however: you could create your own msi installer just
for the TortoiseOverlays handler using the provided merge module. That
way, reference counting would work and you could uninstall your own msi.

Stefan

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