At one time there were guidelines that stated that registry and program files layouts should follow a "company name"\"product name"[\"product version"] scheme. There was also advice to do the same thing in the Start menu as well, although the latest guidelines in the Start menu have changed.
In the Start menu, they now recommend that if your product is part of a suite of more than 3 products (or if you have more than one shortcut for any product, which is itself now discouraged) you now place your shortcuts in a folder named after the suite itself (dropping the old "company name" folder). Otherwise you place your shortcut directly into the start menu's programs folder. I haven't seen any new guidelines regarding the file system or registry, but I am personally inclined to do #1 for all related products (suites) and for all registry layouts, and #3 for file system only layouts when the application is expected to always be "standalone". If anyone has seen the latest guidelines, please point them out and correct me. -----Original Message----- From: IFM Lists [mailto:jkli...@ifm-services.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 4:24 PM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: [WiX-users] Best Practices on Directory Structure? I have a question on how we "should" structure the directories for our software (for loose values of "should"). Is there a guideline that prefers one of the following over the other, given the company ACME and the program WidetApp, or is it just tradition etc.? 1) C:\Program Files\ACME\WidgetApp 2) C:\Program Files\WidgetApp 3) C:\Program Files\ACME WidgetApp I see in the WiX 3.0 documentation #2, i.e. <Directory Id="TARGETDIR" Name="SourceDir"> <Directory Id="ProgramFilesFolder"> <Directory Id="APPLICATIONROOTDIRECTORY" Name="My Application Name" ... Gabor Deak Jahn's wonderful WiX tutorial has, #1 for example: <Directory Id="TARGETDIR" Name="SourceDir"> <Directory Id="ProgramFilesFolder" Name="PFiles"> <Directory Id="Acme" Name="Acme"> <Directory Id="INSTALLDIR" Name="Foobar 1.0"> If I'm interpreting the output of heat, I see #1. <Fragment> <DirectoryRef Id="TARGETDIR"> <Directory Id="dirGUID1" Name="Acme" /> ... <Fragment> <DirectoryRef Id="dirGUID1"> <Directory Id="dirGUID2" Name="WidgetApp" /> If I look at my Windows Vista Start button, I see many instances of #3 in the form Microsoft Foo or Windows Bar. Microsoft Office PowerPoint Viewer 2007 ... Windows Calendar Windows Contacts ... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
