Advertised shortcuts vs. non-advertised shortcuts in windows setup project

wix windows-installer setup-project
fakir314 picture fakir314 · Aug 2, 2012 · Viewed 16.3k times · Source

I cannot understand what is exact consequences of using attribute Advertise in Shortcut attribute. What is the diffirence?

Answer

cosmin picture cosmin · Aug 2, 2012

Advertised shortcuts are used by advertised features:

  • when a feature is installed as advertised, it is only registered with Windows Installer; it's content is not actually copied on the machine
  • when launching an advertised shortcut which targets something in this advertised feature, the feature content is finally copied on the machine

So advertised features and shortcuts are a form of "advertising". Your package shows the user that it has a feature available and installs it only when the user want to use it. If the shortcut is never used, the feature is never fully installed.

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