I'm creating an installer for website. There is a custom dialog for setting up the connection string. After installation it is written to the Web.config. But before the installation user see an empty edit box. Is there any way to read the default connection string from the Web.config from the embedded cab file to show it in the edit box before the installation process?
For now the only solution I see is to write that default value manually. But this way I will have to synchronize it with the content of the Web.config before MSI is created.
If you want to do this at install time, there's no other way than a custom action. If I remember correctly, Community MSI Extensions pack contains something like this.
However, I would do it differently. It sounds like the default value is known at build time. Thus, you can make your build process responsible for placing the same default connection string into the web.config and the MSI property.
Related
I have a Word AddIn which uses one setting to retrieve information from a webservice. This setting is stored in de settings section of the project (see image)
To be able to change this setting after the application is compiled, the access modifier is set to public. When I compile the application and use it in Word, I only have to change the ConfigURL in de [applicaitonname].dll.config. This works perfectly, the new URL is applied when trying to retrieve information from another webserivce address (URL).
In this project, I also have a Wix project to create an MSI for this AddIn. Now when I use the MSI to install the AddIn on a computer and after the installation, I change the ConfigURL, the new value is not applied, it still uses the value which was set when creating the MSI.
does anyone know if it is possible to create an MSI for deployment, and still able to change settings values in the config file after installation?
I assume that your Wix project installs the AddIn in the Program Files folder. If that's the case then most likely your user doesn't have the write permissions to this folder. You can either adjust your Wix project to setup necessary permissions to the AddIn's folder or deploy your configuration file to a different location e.g. %APPDATA%\Roaming\[AppName].
From what I've found the VSTO customization DLLs are always loaded from a temporary folder location and not from the original location irrespective of whether ClickOnce cache is used or not. The location of the temporary folder is the Shadow copy folder of .NET framework which is mentioned under the registry key HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Fusion\DownloadCacheLocation.
Shadow Copy is a feature where DLLs can be updated while they are being used. To implement this feature, DLLs are copied to a temporary location when they are being used so that DLL at original location can be updated.
The Shadow copy feature has been used in VSTO from the initial version and there is no way to disable it. Shadow copy can be disabled for .NET AppDomain while creating an AppDomain but in the case of VSTO customization, the developer has no control over the way AppDomain is created and hence cannot configure the behavior.
In order to load a configuration file, it must be located in the same folder where the assembly is loaded from. Unfortunately, your config file does not get copied to the shadow cache so it seems it uses some hardcoded values.
In order to solve this issue, you can explicitly load a configuration file from the installation folder. Take a look at this answer for more information.
I need to change an entry of a .NET config file.
The problem is that the App.config in the project folder needs to stay untouched, because otherwise the application won't work within the IDE anymore.
I need the installed .NET config file changed after its installation.
Whenever I try to reference that file and build my installer, i get an error that the file can't be found. Of course it can't be found there, because the installation folder doesn't exist, when I build the installer.
How can I achieve that goal?
You are not saying how you are editing it, but WIX has two facilities for doing this properly. You can use XmlFile or XmlConfig. These are scheduled at the proper time by WIX for you. You can set the path to the file a few ways as they accept a formatted string, so you can use an expected installed path or the file id.
When Burn runs an MSI installer, using MsiPackage, I'd like the MSI's log file to have a custom name, like MyProductName.log. I'd also like to append to an existing log file (with same name).
In InstallShield's Basic MSI Project's Release view there is an entry "MSI Command-Line Arguments" where you can enter a custom log file name:
/l+* "%TEMP%\MyProductName.log"
The "+" will append the log to an existing file.
Burn can pass public properties to the MSI, but I don't see a way to do what I want.
It looks like I'll need to write code (custom Burn bootstrapper) to run after the MsiPackage is installed (or uninstalled) to copy the contents of the log file (in the Burn variable defined in LogPathVariable) to the file with the custom name.
You can use the LogPathVariable attribute of the MsiPackage element to provide a custom log file name ...
See: http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/manual/v3/xsd/wix/msipackage.html
Also: https://support.firegiant.com/hc/en-us/articles/230912207-Pass-Properties-to-MsiPackage-from-Bundle-
To do what I needed, I wrote a simple bootstrapper, which became more complicated as I addressed things like passing installer properties to the bootstrapper, giving warnings if installing an x86 installer on an x64 OS (we encourage customers to use and x64 installer), etc.
Can anyone let me know, how I can change the log path in wix standard Bootstraper application. By default logs are created in temp directory.
How to set or get all logs in a custom bootstrapper application
http://windows-installer-xml-wix-toolset.687559.n2.nabble.com/Burn-and-Msi-logging-revisited-td7578871.html
Above links say, at the end or when any error occurs, logs can be copied from tmp to different directory.
But I have to create the logs from the beginning in a different directory, rather than copying at the end.
Thanks
Just use /log C:\Path\to\log\file.txt in the command line of your bootstrapper. If you want to change teh default location of the log you would need to modify your burn code and build using your own burn.exe which is a nightmare to maintain when you update wix or need to distribute your wix build process to another build system.
So I have a Wix 3.0 project that installs an IIS7 Native Code Module. When uninstalling I would like to be able to shut down the IIS7 application pools before deleting the file so that a reboot is not necessary.
I am using the appcmd utility to shut down the app pools in a CustomAction element, but when I attempt to do an uninstall I get this error before the customaction is ever invoked:
The setup must update files or
services that cannot be updated while
the system is running. If you choose
to continue, a reboot will be required
to complete the setup.
I have the "After='InstallInitialize'" property set on the CustomAction, because the documentation says that any deferred/not-impersonated custom action must come between InstallInitialize and InstallFinalize.
So is there some way to have a custom action execute before this check for files in use is made? Or disable this check for a given file, or make the check happen later in the sequence?
Yes, you can specify the order for actions to occur by modifying the Sequence column in the InstallExecuteSequence table within the MSI file.
Get the ORCA tool to examine the MSI file to see what I mean, and use a Javascript script to modify the MSI as appropriate.