When FinalBuilder is complete, and our new software is installed on a given workstation ... .
we are finding with a few dll's, that we must:
Delete the old file(s)
Do a regasm -u "C:\Program Files\\.dll" (as administrator)
Install new file(s)
Issue: regasm "C:\Program Files\\.dll" (as administrator)
Is there something I can do during the FinalBuilder build process to make this happen automatically when a client installs our software?
Note: project are from Visual Studio - VB6 & Visual Basic (vb6, VS2008, Vs2010).
You need to use an installation program to do this, something like Innosetup.
We found that .net based COM dll’s needed to be unregistered using Regasm.exe /u with the previous edition prior to loading and then registering the new edition. MS VS MSI projects didn’t do a very good job of unregistering COM dll’s.
We discovered this after doing a range of upgrades to an application and attempting to use a .net MSI installer project. Essentially we broke XP’s add/remove programs with one of our installations, requiring an embarrassing set of “OS rebuilds” for a client. It was a very expensive lesson in COM registration and how poorly .net unregister occurs.
VS 2012 doesn’t include MSI projects, you might also want to have a look at WIX projects http://wixtoolset.org/ as a replacement. It takes a few days to get up to speed and then I’ve found it to be very good tool.