The namespace provides classes that allow you to write custom installers for your own components. The class is the base class for all custom installers in the.NET Framework.

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

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