Through the Installers property, an installer contains a collection of other installers as children. As the installer is executed, it cycles through its children and calls Install, Commit, Rollback, or Uninstall. For an example of an object in the Installers collection, see EventLogInstaller.

The Context property contains information about the installation. For example, information about the location of the log file for the installation, the location of the file that saves information required by the Uninstall method, and the command line that was entered when the installation executable was run. For an example of an installation executable, see Installer Tool (Installutil.exe).

The Install, Commit, Rollback, and Uninstall methods are not always called on the same instance of Installer. For example, you might use an Installer to install and commit an application, and then release the reference to that Installer. Later, uninstalling the application creates a new reference to an Installer, which means that the Uninstall method is called on a different instance of Installer. For this reason, do not save the state of a computer in an installer. Instead, use an IDictionary that is preserved across calls and passed into the Install, Commit, Rollback, and Uninstall methods.

 Classes

	Class	Description
	AssemblyInstaller	Loads an assembly, and runs all the installers in it.
	ComponentInstaller	Specifies an installer that copies properties from a component to use at install time.
	InstallContext	Contains information about the current installation.
	Installer	Provides the foundation for custom installations.
	InstallerCollection	Contains a collection of installers to be run during an installation.
	InstallEventArgs	Provides data for the events: BeforeInstall, AfterInstall, Committing, Committed, BeforeRollback, AfterRollback, BeforeUninstall, AfterUninstall.
	InstallException	The exception that is thrown when an error occurs during the commit, rollback, or uninstall phase of an installation.
	ManagedInstallerClass	Infrastructure. Represents a managed install.
	TransactedInstaller	Defines an installer that either succeeds completely or fails and leaves the computer in its initial state.

 Interfaces

	Interface	Description
	IManagedInstaller	Infrastructure. Provides an interface for a managed installer.

 Delegates

	Delegate	Description
	InstallEventHandler	Represents the method that will handle the BeforeInstall, AfterInstall, Committing, Committed, BeforeRollback, AfterRollback, BeforeUninstall, or AfterUninstall event of an Installer.

 Enumerations

	Enumeration	Description
	UninstallAction	Specifies what an installer should do during an uninstallation.