Certificates - When are they installed in certificate store?

Question

I have a tcp server which uses certificates for ssl/tls and licensing. For the ssl/tls the certificate(s) are stored in a pkcs#12 file, which I assume would be installed as part of the installation process.

Regarding the Rhino Licencing, is it normal practice to install the x.509 certificate in the certificate store as part of the installation process? Installer would either be VS2010 installer, or possibly Installshied. I've not had much experience of installers, and normally I would install the certs manually, by hand.

I'm specifically looking for generally advice as when is the best time to install certificates. Don't focus too much on the Rhino licensing aspect.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Consider a custom action to install the cert. There's an example in this question: Installing a certificate in a .MSI Custom Action doesn't work properly

Answer 2

I understand this can't be considered a full answer, but it might lead you to a solution. In case you are still about to decide the toolset to build the installation with, WiX has a pretty Certificate element, which can solve you task with one-line XML. If WiX is not an option, you'll have to create a custom action, if InstallShield doesn't expose this functionality out of the box (VS project doesn't, as far as I know). But even in this worst case of custom action you can take a look how it is implemented in WiX - it is totally open source.