Software Deployment

i always use advertised shortcuts but i know many people prefer not to
I'm curious of where you got this information [;)]
Maybe they are referring to installation in TS (Terminal Server) environments as that would be another question.

I would say most people do prefer advertised shortcuts (for non-TS environments) to make the resiliency feature trigger a repair for broken components (or "profile-fix" resiliency).

Can someone please explain to me the benefits of unadvertised shortcuts over advertised shortcuts (if any).
Did miss your actual question, there are two "benefits" for non-advertised shortcuts I can think of.

1. They will not work as entrypoints therefore not trigger a repair when launching the application through the shortcut if not the application it-self triggers any entrypoint such as ActiveX/COM component.

2. They can safely be deleted by the end-user (if permissions allow) and will not get repaired until a feature-level repair (containing the shortcut component) is triggered.

Hi Kim...I have a couple of questions in this context..
1> What exactly is the difference when we (a) do an advertised installation using msiexec/j (b) advertise the shortcuts but perform a normail msiexec/i installation?
2> If a non advertised shortcut does not create any entry points and does not repair on first use?..Then what extra benefits do we achieve by advertised installation (msiexec/j) if the advertised shortcuts installs on demand and installs all the files..

1 - A) When you advertise the product only the entrypoints will be installed and be ready for any install on-demand that is; when any entrypoint is called/executed such as an advertised shortcut.
1- B) I think above answers this question, right?

Advertising a product can be helpful if you have a slow network and the installation is (very) big. In this way only the required components will be installed when needed before ex. launching the application.

2)
Not only an advertised shortcut will create an entrypoint (aka Darwin Descriptor). If the shortcut is of non-advertised type then the executable it-self must call an entrypoint (ex. COM component) for a repair to be triggered. If the MSI do not have any entrypoints then advertising the product will be of no use as resiliency will not be possible.

Thanks for your clarification.. What I understand is that advertised shortcuts are only an entry points that will trigger an install on demand.. Pls correct me if im wrong..
So what happens if we perform a normal install and advertise the shortcut? For a normal install everything will be installed on the system during the installation itself..isnt it? what benefit do we get of an advertise shortcut?

The first statement is correct.
Install On-Demand is often referred to when the application will be install the first time you execute an entrypoint.
The technology behind it is the same as when a repair is in progress so the result will be the same that is; install/repair broken components (missing or corrupted keypaths).

For a normal install everything will be installed on the system during the installation itself
Yes, most often depending on the account the application is installed by.
If you for example deploy the application through AD/GPO and per-machine the installation will be performed under the system context. In this case any included HKCU registry entry or files located under the userprofile will have to be repaired once the user login and executes an entrypoint, also called profile-fix.

So the benifit of using advertised shortcut will be one extra entrypoint that will trigger a repair once a broken component is found.

The following link will give you some more details of "Application Resiliency".
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa302344.aspx

Hope that clarifies it abit further.

Yes.. Thanks a lot Kim..Now it seems to be quite clear!!!
Thats the reason why we use active setup for Non advertised shortcut so that an entry point is created for different users who logs in( for installing user profile data)..
As for advertised shortcut they are itself the entry points for the HKCU keys..

Thats the reason why we use active setup for Non advertised shortcut
If you have a non-advertised shortcut then why not make it advertised to let the MSI install/repair the HKCU registry entries and/or user-files instead of letting Active Setup do this?

Active Setup is most used when there are no entrypoints at all but as you have a shortcut that you could make advertised I'm curious why you choosed to use Active Setup instead. Always interesting to know if there are some underlying cause of the choice.

Hi folks,
no rules without execptions...
Multimedia apps like Quicktime/Realplayer, Browsers like Firefox nowadays have a helper exe to set/unset them as
"Default Programs" trough the OS dialog. This removes and adds shortcuts for those apps. But of course, this are not advertised ones and so the 'self healing' process can't be triggered.
This is one of the main reason, why i use 'Active Setup' to install the profile settings for those apps.
The second reason to for me to use AS: One can reinstall a particular feature, even when the (vendor) app has it's problems with self healing.

Regards, Nick

I have one question regarding repair

1.if the short cut is advertised, Is it self rapairs all the features present in the MSI when the shortcut is launched.or just only one feature containg that shortcut?
2.does forceful repair in test user account will re-install all the features?
can any one provide some info on this?

thanks in advance

http://msiworld.blogspot.com/2008/10/difference-between-self-heal-and-repair.html

thank you very much for the info ....

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