To report the status of a Package Command Manager (PCM)-spawned application installation or deinstallation, a package command status Management Information Format (MIF) file must be created in the Windows directory.
The MIF file name must be unique so that multiple installations in a single session can report their status without a conflict in the name of the MIF files. The creation date and time stamp of the MIF file must be set to a time after PCM started to run the job. In this way, PCM knows that the MIF file was placed there by your setup program and will update the Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) database with the values the file provides.
SMS provides two DLLs to assist ISVs in writing package command status MIFs: ISMIF32.DLL, for use on 32-bit machines, and ISMIF16.DLL, for use on 16-bit machines. Programs started by a package command can call a function from these DLLs that creates the MIF file in the Windows directory with the correct date and time stamp.
SMS also provides a tool, ISMIF, that writes a generic status MIF from information given through a command line and/or a dialog box.