From the perspective of CruiseControl.NET, InstallShield is just another application, which can be run directly with the exec task or indirectly via NAnt or MSBuild. For many people, the hard part is just learning how to invoke InstallShield from the command line.

The following information relates to InstallShield for Windows 11.5, but similar features are available for other versions.

The InstallShield tool for building from the command line is IsCmdBld.exe. It's documented in the InstallShield help library and user's guide. You may find it useful to build in quiet mode (-s), as otherwise it produces a large amount of text output on stdout. Unfortunately, it doesn't produce an XML output log, but CruiseControl.Net is good about picking up error messages from the text.

While some control of the installation build can be done directly from the command line, you may also find it useful to use InstallShield's environment path variables. These can be used, for example, to tell InstallShield to pick up the file for the kit from the CC.Net working directory.