MAKEMSI quickly and reliably creates MSI files in a non-programmatic way
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\->Source Code->Configuration / Options->Build Error Templates

Build Error Templates

For a lot of build errors Windows Installer can supply some extra details about what went wrong. To format the information correctly a "template" for each type of error is required. This is the purpose of an MSI "Error" table.

Rather than forcing you to "bulk up" the MSI just to supply better build time error reporting you can set the "MSI_ERROR_LIBRARIES" macro to contain a list of one or more template files from which the error template can be read. Missing template files are ignored.

Each template file is separated from the others by a semi-colon (";") and each is read in turn until the message is found.

If none of the template files are found then the MSI's "Error" table is searched, if this also fails then a reasonable default is used (although you will need to match the error code with those in "MSI.CHM").

The "ErrorTemplates.TXT" file holds the messages installed by MAKEMSI.

Build Error Templates

The format of this file is quite simple, each line starts with an error number followed by one or more spaces (or tabs) and the template text. An ".idt" file is suitable as the first 3 lines will never match in any case.

As any non-matching lines are completely ignored you can use ";" to "comment" out a line. Leading and trailing spaces are also ignored.

One enhancement is that the character sequence "\n" is converted to a line break.


Microsoft awarded me an MVP (Most Valuable Professional award) in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 & 2009 for the Windows SDK (Windows Installer) area.Please email me any feedback, additional information or corrections.
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Microsoft awarded me an MVP (Most Valuable Professional award) in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 & 2009 for the Windows SDK (Windows Installer) area.