INF AddComponent Directive
An AddComponent directive is used within an INF DDInstall.Components section of an extension INF file. It creates a virtual child device for the software component under the current device. This directive is supported for Windows 10 version 1703 and later.
[DDInstall.Components]
AddComponent=ComponentName,[flags],component-install-section
Entries
ComponentName
Specifies the name of the software component to create. Each AddComponent directive in an INF file must have a unique value.
flags
Specifies one or more (ORed) flags, currently undefined but reserved for future use.
component-install-section
References an INF-writer-defined section that contains information for creating the named software component for this device.
Remarks
Each INF-writer-created section name must be unique within the INF file and must follow the general rules for defining section names. For more information about these rules, see General Syntax Rules for INF Files.
An AddComponent directive must reference a named component-install-section elsewhere in the INF file. Each such section has the following form:
[component-install-section]
ComponentIDs=component-id[,component-id] …
[Description=description]
Each component-install-section must have at least the ComponentIDs entry as shown here. However, the remaining entries are optional.
Note that ComponentIDs are HardwareIDs, which means they are strings defined by the hardware developer. To ensure uniqueness of these IDs, in most cases, we recommend following the identifier schema used for PCI devices. It is possible that a vendor might want to use a different schema, but that depends on the scenario.
For example, a vendor with multiple components on a single device might want to associate the hardware IDs of the component with the parent. In this case, they could create a ComponentID by appending a four-character vendor-defined component identifier to the hardware ID of the parent.
Component-Install Section Entries and Values
ComponentIDs=id1[, id2] … [, idN]
Specifies the component identifiers for a software component. Component IDs work the same way that Hardware IDs do, and should follow similar formatting. For a software component, the system prepends the INF-supplied values with SWC\ to create the Hardware IDs. For example, a ComponentIDs value of VID0001&PID0001 results in a hardware ID of SWC\VID0001&PID0001.
Description=description
Optionally specifies a string that describes the software component, typically for localization, expressed as a %strkey% token defined in an INF Strings section.
If a description string contains any %strkey% tokens, each token can represent a maximum of 511 characters. The total string, after any string token substitutions, should not exceed 1024 characters.