I want my custom action to be performed after a user viewed and modified features, which are to be installed, but before execute installing.
I tried to call my action before PublishProduct (it seems to me that it's the right point), but I got a linkage errors from WiX.
<InstallUISequence>
<Custom Action="ModifyConfigBeforeStartService" Before="PublishProduct"/>
</InstallUISequence>
The error is:
error LGHT0094: Unresolved reference to symbol 'WixAction:InstallUISequence/PublishProduct' in section 'Product:*'
Then I tried to call my action after CostFinalize.
From the documentation:
The CostFinalize action queries the Condition table to determine which features are scheduled to be installed.
But (from the same doc):
The CostFinalize action must be executed before starting any user interface sequence which allows the user to view or modify Feature table selections
How installer detects which features are to be installed, if user interface wasn't displayed yet?
PublishProduct exists in the execute sequence not the UI sequence. The name of your custom action implies it should be scheduled before StartServices (also in the execute sequence) not the PublishProduct action.
File costing is another important concept for you to learn but not really relevant here. I'd start with this required reading:
InstallSite: Installation Phases and In-Script Execution
Related
I've got an MSI built in WiX defined as below:
<Feature Id="Core"
Display="0"
Absent="disallow"
ConfigurableDirectory="INSTALLDIR"
AllowAdvertise="no"
Level="1">...</Feature>
I have a 'commit' custom action that loops through all the features of the MSI and determines their install-state. The log file shows this "Core" feature as installed 'Local', but MsiGetFeatureState returns INSTALLSTATE_ADVERTISED. I thought that was impossible given I set:
AllowAdvertise="no"
FWIW, MsiGetFeatureState correctly returns INSTALLSTATE_LOCAL for all other installed features and INSTALLSTATE_ABSENT for all other not-installed features.
Edit for more info:
This occurs during a fresh install.
I do not set the ADVERTISE property (I still don't fully understand what it's for)
The "Core" feature is a parent feature with children that all have the wix attribute InstallDefault="followParent".
The "Core" feature (as well as its children) all have components attached to them.
All the child features are marked as INSTALLSTATE_ADVERTISED as well.
I have a commit custom action (scheduled before InstallFinalize) that queries the installed feature states ([ProductCode] is passed in via CustomActionData). I assumed that a commit action was the right choice since the MSI is officially installed by that point.
AllowAdvertise="no" turns into msidbFeatureAttributesDisallowAdvertise in the Feature table, which says:
Note that this bit works only with features that are listed by the ADVERTISE Property.
IOW, if it became advertised for some other reason, this bit won't stop that.
Found out what the problem was (I think).
I had a custom action that would call MsiSetComponentState() to set a component to INSTALLSTATE_ABSENT if some condition was true. This means that my 'Core' feature was intended to have every attached component set to INSTALLSTATE_LOCAL, but since this one component was manually forced into INSTALLSTATE_ABSENT the 'Core' feature (once installed) is considered to have an install state of 'Advertised'. An additional consequence was that during uninstall all components attached to the 'Core' feature were getting left behind. Their action states were NULL (do nothing) instead of Absent (remove).
Moral of the story, don't use MsiSetComponentState() to turn off a component at install time.
I am using the WiX util User element to create a user during installation. We are using a block similar to the following
<util:User Id="serviceUser"
Name="[USER_NAME]"
CanNotChangePassword="yes"
CreateUser="yes"
FailIfExists="yes"
LogonAsService="yes"
RemoveOnUninstall="yes"
Password="[USER_PASS]">
</util:User>
I want to make sure that the user will always be created and I want it to be rolled back during uninstall but not during upgrade because that would mess up some credentials that we use.
I opened the generated MSI in Orca to see the generated action sequence and was confused
All the custom actions for managing users appear in the custom action table, but the CreateUser CreateUserRollback and RemoveUser actions have very strange type values.
Referring to the InstallExecuteSequence table, the only action that is actually sequenced is ConfigureUsers.
How are CreateUser and CreateUserRollback sequenced and if I want to control them in a <InstallExecuteSequence> block, what sequence order should I give them.
Otherwise, is there a better way that I could accomplish this which I am missing?
I am authoring a very small patch to a very large package, it's sole purpose is to update a single file and add four smaller ones.
Using the WiX help as a guide I am able to generate the MSP file.
However, a patch runs apparently it runs the original package in reinstall mode, with all the custom actions and whatnot that go along with it, which is not what I want.
Further research turned up the OptimizeCA property of the MsiPatchMetadata table, and its WiX equivalent OptimizeCustomActions which allows custom actions to be skipped when applying a patch.
That sounded exactly what I wanted but unfortunately it did not work as expected. The original package has a bunch of XML config file change custom actions, and looking at the log it appears to be erroring out when it hits the XmlFile CAs:
MSI (s) (58!74) [14:53:24:928]: PROPERTY CHANGE: Adding ExecXmlFileRollback property. Its value is (stuff deleted)
MSI (s) (58:74) [14:53:24:928]: Doing action: ExecXmlFileRollback
Action 14:53:24: ExecXmlFileRollback.
Action start 14:53:24: ExecXmlFileRollback.
MSI (s) (58:74) [14:53:24:928]: Skipping Action: ExecXmlFileRollback. It is being skipped as per the value provided for OptimizeCA in MsiPatchMetadata table of an applicable patch
Action ended 14:53:24: ExecXmlFileRollback. Return value 0.
SchedXmlFile: Error 0x8007065a: Failed MsiDoAction on deferred action
SchedXmlFile: Error 0x8007065a: failed to schedule ExecXmlFileRollback for file: (file)
SchedXmlFile: Error 0x8007065a: failed to begin file change for file: (file)
Action ended 14:53:24: SchedXmlFile. Return value 3.
You can see that the OptimizeCA property is being respected for the ExecXmlFileRollback action, as it is being skipped, but something goes wrong when it tries to schedule it and that causes the whole thing to crash the installer.
This is the relevant part of my WiX patch authoring:
<OptimizeCustomActions
SkipAssignment="no"
SkipImmediate="no"
SkipDeferred="yes">
</OptimizeCustomActions>
I'm really having a hard time figuring out what to try next. I found another person having the exact same issue as me on wix-users but there was no response to the query.
A condition including "Not PATCH" should prevent the CA from running during patch install.
Alternatively, "Not Installed" would prevent it from running if the product is already installed, because it looks like you'd have a similar issue during a repair.
Given:
Wix 3.0 is used to create MSI.
The product consists of multiple feature.
Each feature has few sub features. It’s a standard MSI feature tree.
Each feature or sub feature depend on multiple external components.
E.g. .NET 4, ASP.NET etc
Custom action written in C# using Wix 3.0 SDK processes these
dependency and evaluates if components are present or not for a
given set of features.
At time of install if dependent component is missing for given
selection of features, installation fails.
To achieve:
Ability to execute prerequisite check, which is already done in MSI as custom action during installation, without installing MSI on a given machine.
Failed Attempts:
1)
Custom action have function signature like this
[CustomAction]
public static ActionResult ProcessFeaturePrerequisite(Session session);
In order to get session object I used following API present in Wix 3.0 SDK
Session session = Installer.OpenPackage("Pathto\\Product.msi", true); // true doesn’t install it. Also tried with false, but didn’t work.
When I invoke the above method with above session following things fail.
session.Features["SomeFeature"].CurrentState;
This throws exception.
System.ArgumentException was unhandled by user code
Message=Feature ID not registered. SomeFeature
Source=Microsoft.Deployment.WindowsInstaller
StackTrace:
at Microsoft.Deployment.WindowsInstaller.FeatureInfo.get_CurrentState()
Also below critical API which determines prerequisite status always returns false.
session.EvaluateCondition(prereq);
2)
I know a command line way to specify features to the above MSI and install it. It goes like this
msiexec /i "Product.msi" ADDLOCAL=ALL REMOVE="Foo,Bar "
I couldn’t find any API in SDK which allows me to pass additional params which returns session object without starting installation. My guess is passing such param will make session.Features more valid.
Questions:
So how do I achieve above goal?
Is there
any API in Wix SDK which allows me to call custom action without
invoking installation?
any way to invoke custom action from command line for a given MSI
without installing?
any way to make Wix to change MSI into accepting a command string
containing custom action name which only evaluates the action?
any better way to do the same?
I suppose you're trying to solve the problem with the wrong tool. As far as I understand, you would like to check the installation prerequisites from inside a certain tool, but not from the installation. As long as the functionality is implemented as a custom action in the MSI package, you'd like to utilize that functionality in order not to duplicate the code.
I would choose a different way in your situation:
Extract the functionality which actually checks for prerequisites into a separate assembly, e.g. checkprereq.dll
Refactor your custom action to reference checkprereq.dll. Note that you'll have to add checkprereq.dll to your Binary table as well as the customaction.dll. You should divide the responsibility here: the custom action part works with MSI stuff - in your case, it's defining which prerequisites to check based on the combination of features a user selected - and the functional part - the actual prerequisites verification, which is done by checkprereq.dll
Use checkprereq.dll separately when you need to check prerequisites not triggering the installation process
The attempts you've outlined here demonstrate an important false assumption: the session object at install time is the same as the installation object you get by just opening the MSI database for read only purpose. IT'S NOT TRUE! Actually, I doubt it makes any sense to reference the session object outside the installation transaction. As its name states, it is an installation session, that is, available in process - not a static thing.
The MSI package should be treated just as a database when it is just a file and not a running installation. Hence, only static information living in MSI package can be queried and used when you just open it for reading and not installing. I mean you can query the Feature table, for instance, but don't expect it to contain information which makes sense in installation time only, like whether a user chose a feature for installation or not.
Hope this makes sense and shows you the right direction.
I'm migrating some existing products to use WiX 3.5 (I'm using the Votive VS integration). Some of the items I'm installing need to be registered with a third-party framework. The requirement is that I must call a Register() method in a third party .NET assembly to inform it of the presence of the items I'm installing. It expects a COM ProgID.
I can't figure out how to get WiX to do this. I thought about creating a binary Custom Action, but I can't find a way of passing a parameter (a string containing the ProgID) into that custom action. I don't want to hard-code it because I need this to be re-usable code. I can't see a way to do this declaratively because the Register() function is a 'black box'.
Man this is a steep learning curve. What's my best approach here?
Look at the Deployment Tools Foundation (DTF) for WIX. There is a DTF.chm file with the WIX installation with lots of information.
Assuming you installation process is something like
Setup installation, input parameters/ProgID, do validation, etc.
Begin actual installation of files
Call registration methods
You'll need two Custom actions (ignoring rollback and uninstallation)
SetupRegistration
DoRegistration
SetupRegistration should be an immediate custom action fired either from the UI or late in the setup phase. It grabs the ProgID and any other data needed, uses a CustomActionData object and assigns that to a property named "DoRegistration" (Important, the property name must be the same as the second custom action)
The DoRegistration is a deferred custom action and needs to be scheduled in the InstallExecuteSequence probably after InstallFiles, but that depends. It pulls the Session.CustomActionData property and gets the ProgID out, then calls whatever registration method you need.
Am using a sort of what you have described.
I use to call CustomAction(events) when required. Like on clicking button you can call a method which will do work for you.
Calling custom action like:
<Custom Action="ActionName" After="InstallFinalize">CONDITION = "1"</Custom>
Or calling custom action based on specific button click:
<CustomAction Id="TestConnection" BinaryKey="SetupCustomActions" DllEntry="TestConnection" Execute="immediate" Return="check" />