Deploying Station Globals Best Practices

[chbo@mir-robots.com]

I'm currently testing out the TestStand Deployment Utility to deploy test sequencers from my developer system to our test systems.
I have run into a bit of a wall here while testing out the MSI installer approach. These are the steps I took:

1. I used the MSI full deployment setting:

  

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2. I chose the directory of my TestStand system, along with the TestStand Configuration directory, to include the StationGlobals.ini file:

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3. Initially I got this error code -17306, which happened because the StationGlobals.ini never updated.

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4. I tried to remedy this by ticking off the "Force File to Install" box:

This seems to have worked as a temporary solution.

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5. Finally my question:

I don't like this solution, as if I should choose to uninstall this in the test computers, the StationGlobals.ini file will also be deleted from the Cfg folder.
What is the ideal solution here? I am tired of copy pasting files on all my test computers every time there is an update.

Thanks!

[Scott_Richardson]

I believe that if the existing non-versioned file, StationGlobals.ini, on the system has a later date-time stamp than what you are trying to install, MSI will not replace the file. Using the option you mentioned will ignore that default behavior and overwrite the newer file on disk with the older date-time file in the installer.

If you were creating an MSI using WiX tooling, there are ways to "version" non-version files by associating them with companion versioned files, and that would be a way to "version" a non-version file. Likely not worth the effort.