Managing Sections depending on License Feature

Archive: Managing Sections depending on License Feature

xbarns
4th March 2009 15:45 UTC

Managing Sections depending on License Feature
Hi all,

i have a Setup that is supposed to react to features that are extracted out of a license file.

I will get back a string like "Feature1,Feature2,Feature4,Feature5" for all valid features.

I disable all(!) Sections and SectionGroups using SectionSetFlags.

Now i check for the single Features using ${Wordfind} and if a feature exists i (re)enable certain sections.

There are quite a few sections (roughly 30) and i am looking for an easier way to manage that stuff since i have to enable some sections twice (e.g. once for Feature1 and once for Feature3)

Has anyone done something like that before and would like to share knowledge?

I have attached the part of the script that i am talking about.

Thanks for your help.

Animaether
4th March 2009 21:42 UTC

could you loop over the sections, grab their text, and compare the text to a featureset variable that is based on the features enabled?


Function Test
        StrCpy $0 0
        _loop:
                ClearErrors
                SectionGetText $0 $1
                ${If} ${Errors}
                    goto _done
                ${Else}
                    MessageBox MB_OK "[$1]"
                ${EndIf}
                IntOp $0 $0 + 1
                goto _loop
        _done:
FunctionEnd

( you might be able to abuse the section flags as well as there's quite a few bits unused )

Alternatively, perhaps you could use InstTypes with SectionIn? ( though I think that adds an installation type drop-down above the components which you would subsequently have to hide from the user )

Mind you, limiting installation features based on a 'license' like this is pretty poor protection unless used in conjunction with other functionality to prevent the user from e.g. simply extracting the files (if only file extraction would be needed).

xbarns
6th March 2009 11:34 UTC

Mind you, limiting installation features based on a 'license' like this is pretty poor protection unless used in conjunction with other functionality to prevent the user from e.g. simply extracting the files (if only file extraction would be needed).

I know, but it was (luckily) not my decision to do it that way, sadly i have to implement it :(

Animaether
6th March 2009 12:39 UTC

well, I hope the method above might be of use, then - it would provided fully automated handling of section enabled/disabled states, without having to adjust a separate section of code each time you add/remove a section to the list/etc.