Difficulty: Medium
Correct Answer: Create an installer that uses a custom action to install only the location specific resource files.
Explanation:
Introduction / Context:
ASP.NET applications often support multiple languages through satellite assemblies or resource files. When deploying such applications, you may want a single installer that can adapt to the target server's language or regional settings and install only the appropriate localized resources. Certification questions about deployment focus on understanding how to use installer features, such as custom actions, to perform conditional installation tasks based on environment properties.
Given Data / Assumptions:
Concept / Approach:
Launch conditions allow the installer to decide whether the installation should proceed, but they do not by themselves control exactly which files are deployed. To selectively install resources based on locale, you can use a custom action. Custom actions can run code during installation that checks the server's culture or UI language and then installs or removes certain resource files accordingly. This gives you fine grained control over which localized assemblies or resource files end up on the target machine while using a single installer package.
Step-by-Step Solution:
1. Design the installer so that it includes all three sets of resource files (English, French, and German) as potential payloads.
2. Implement a custom action in the installer that runs during installation and can access system properties such as the operating system locale or server language settings.
3. In the custom action code, check the target server configuration and determine which resource set is appropriate for that environment.
4. Based on this decision, copy or register only the selected language files to the appropriate directories and skip or remove the others.
5. Test the installer on machines with different language settings to verify that the correct resources are deployed in each case.
Verification / Alternative check:
To verify the solution, you can log the actions taken by the custom action during installation and then inspect the deployment folders on servers with various locales. You should see only English resources on servers configured for English, and similarly for French and German. Documentation for Windows Installer and Visual Studio setup projects confirms that custom actions are the standard way to implement such conditional installation logic.
Why Other Options Are Wrong:
Simply setting Installer.Context does not automatically select and deploy specific resource files based on locale; it is a programming property, not an installation logic mechanism.
A launch condition can block installation if the locale does not meet requirements, but it cannot on its own choose which resources to install when the installation proceeds.
Calling MsiConfigureProduct is used to reconfigure an already installed product and is not the typical solution for conditional language selection during initial installation.
Common Pitfalls:
One pitfall is creating completely separate installers for each language, which increases maintenance and testing overhead. Another is relying solely on resource naming and hoping the application will ignore extra languages, which wastes disk space and may not comply with deployment policies. Using a single installer with a well designed custom action achieves both flexibility and control over localized resource deployment.
Final Answer:
You should create an installer that uses a custom action to install only the location specific resource files that match the server language settings.
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