Self-Repair, Simple & Short Explanation: Why does the MSI installer reconfigure if I delete a file? Concrete Design Advice for your WiX / MSI File I keep trying to write about repeating MSI self-repair for developers, but end up with too much detail. Here is my last attempt: concrete design advice for what not to … Read more
Your Pre-processor Use I was half-way answering with a suggestion to use the pre-processor constructs (?if? et al) when I realized you only wanted a single MSI (at least at a time – it seems), so I skipped it. I normally use such constructs to compile flavors of MSI files from the same WiX source. … Read more
EDIT: Perhaps look at the answer currently immediately below. This topic has been a headache for long time. I finally figured it out. There are some solutions online, but none of them really works. And of course there is no documentation. So in the chart below there are several properties that are suggested to use … Read more
Deferred custom actions can not directly access installer properties (reference). In fact, only CustomActionData property session.CustomActionData and other methods and properties listed here are available on the session object. Therefore, for a deferred custom action to retrieve a property such as the INSTALLLOCATION, you have to use a type 51 custom action — i.e. a … Read more
Use RemoveFile element with On=”uninstall“. Here’s an example: <Directory Id=”CommonAppDataFolder” Name=”CommonAppDataFolder”> <Directory Id=”MyAppFolder” Name=”My”> <Component Id=”MyAppFolder” Guid=”*”> <CreateFolder /> <RemoveFile Id=”PurgeAppFolder” Name=”*.*” On=”uninstall” /> </Component> </Directory> </Directory> Update It didn’t work 100%. It removed the files, however none of the additional directories – the ones created after the installation – were removed. Any thoughts on … Read more
Short Answer: You add several Upgrade Element entries in your WiX source which will create several rows in the compiled MSI’s Upgrade Table which then list products that are to be uninstalled during installation (or that can abort your installation). You must be very careful about the options you specify for each product family to … Read more
Logging: To properly debug a failed major upgrade you need to create a proper log file (various ways to create log file – also by policy). msiexec.exe /i C:\Path\Your.msi /L*v C:\Your.log Auto-logging could be on: check the TEMP folder for any auto-generated log files there. If not, run again on a virtual to reproduce the … Read more
Cohesion & Coupling: Bundling applications together in a single MSI file, may seem like a good idea. It seems intuitively nice and simple. However, speaking from real world experience I almost always end up splitting applications to install via their own MSI files, and I don’t like multi-lingual setups either (true multi-lingual setups are difficult … Read more
“Short” Answer Essentially: you could 1) run completely silently (suppresses the files-in-use dialog), 2) shut down locking applications gracefully (application update to allow graceful shutdown – with or without restart manager support), 3) ensure proper service control (if dealing with services), 4) force-kill running processes (the “sledgehammer-approach”), 5) abort setup if locks are detected, 6) … Read more
WiX Default GUI-Sets: The default WiX MSI GUIs are included from the DLL WixUIExtension.dll. Normally you just add a reference to this file in your WiX project and specify a default WiX GUI set such as <UIRef Id=”WixUI_Mondo” /> or <UIRef Id=”WixUI_Minimal” /> – and that is good enough. The WixUIExtension.dll file can be found … Read more