Transitive Property

Determines whether the installer will reevaluate the Condition property for a selected folder, file, registry key, or registry value when reinstalling on a target computer.

Note

This property is an advanced feature and should be used with care.

Settings

The settings for the Transitive property are:

Setting

Description

False

The Condition property for the selected item will only be evaluated the first time the application or component is installed.

If Condition evaluates to True, the item will be installed; if Condition evaluates to False it will not be installed.

The Condition property will not be reevaluated for future installations or reinstallations. Therefore, the component will remain installed or uninstalled, based on the evaluation of the Condition property at initial installation.

True

The Condition property for the selected item will be reevaluated each time the application or component is installed. It will be installed if the Condition property evaluates to True.

Remarks

When the Transitive property is set to False, subsequent installation or reinstallation of an application or component may produce unexpected results.

As an example, suppose that the Condition property for a file is set to VersionNT>=500 and the Transitive property is set to False.

In this example, the Condition property stipulates that the file will not be installed unless the installer determines the target computer's operating system is Windows 2000 (formerly called Microsoft Windows NT 5.0) or later. The Transitive property set to False stipulates that the installer will not reevaluate the Condition property after the initial installation.

This means that if the installer determines the operating system is Windows 95, it will not install this file, and it will save the False evaluation of the installation condition. If the operating system is later upgraded to Windows 2000 and you install or reinstall the application (or any application containing this component), the installer will not reevaluate the VersionNT>=500 condition, and the file will still not be installed or upgraded — even though now it should be.

To avoid this type of error, you can set the Transitive property to True.

See Also

Reference

Properties for the Registry Editor

Properties for the File System Editor

Condition Property