Property Definition Placeholders

MSI Package Builder allows using standard and user-defined MSI property placeholders when configuring custom actions, registry modifications and other changes in the installation project. Standard property placeholders are defined in Windows Installer specification. You can find a full list of supported standard properties in the Property Reference article on MSDN. These properties include system folder placeholders, explained in the system folder definition placeholders article.

Placeholders are replaced with actual values during the package deployment. In the project you can use a property definition placeholder that starts with ${ and ends with }$ and contains one of the supported property names, e. g. ${Manufacturer}$. For example, if you specify this placeholder as a value of the registry key, it will be replaced with the name of package manufacturer during package deployment. As another example, you can use a system folder placeholder to specify a path to a script that should be executed in the custom action configuration. The system folder placeholder will be replaced with the actual path during the package deployment.

The program allows using user-defined MSI properties passed to the package externally during deployment. These properties should be spelled with all capital letters and should be passed to the package during deployment as parameters of msiexec.exe command, for example:

msiexec.exe /i installer.msi AUTOUPDATE=1;REGISTEREDOWNER=Dreamlight;REINSTALLMODE=omus

The command allow defines ${AUTOUPDATE}$, ${REGISTEREDOWNER}$ and ${REINSTALLMODE}$ property placeholders that can be used in the project.

In addition to standard and user-defined placeholders, there are additional placeholders available that can be used to configure specific project settings.

Custom Action Placeholders

Using the following placeholders you can specify locations of file system resources. For example, a custom action includes a reference to a script deployed and executed by the action. To specify a path to the script a special placeholder should be used. It has the same syntax as system folder placeholders starting from ${ and ending by }$. Below is a list of placeholders supported by custom actions.

Wrapped Package Placeholders

When you configure a wrapped package, you can use special placeholder to specify paths to the file system locations. Below you can find a list of supported placeholders. They have the same syntax as system folder placeholders starting from ${ and ending by }$.