I have seen many solutions for automating my InstallShield build, but I am having issues with each one. I am using InstallShield Professional 2013. Sorry for the lengthy question, but I am clueless on which direction to go to solve my issues.
1) IsCmdBld.exe - I have a script that runs and will build my installer. BUT, when the installer runs, I get an error message that says "The System Administrator has set policies to prevent this installation". I am not sure why this is happening, but I do not get the same error message if I build the installer through the designer. EDIT: Here is my command (%guid% is a Guid I generate to set the Product Code):
for /f %%i in ('"C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Bin\uuidgen.exe"') do set guid=%%i
"C:\Program Files (x86)\InstallShield\2013 SP1 SAB\System\ISCmdBld.exe" -p "MyInstaller.ism" -r SingleImage -y "1.0.0.13" -z ProductCode=%guid%
2) InstallShield Automation Interface - I have followed numerous examples and tutorials on this, but all end in the same result. When I call the following code:
var project = new ISWiAuto20.ISWiProject();
I get this error:
Unable to cast COM object of type 'System.__ComObject' to interface type
'ISWiAuto20.ISWiProject'. This operation failed because the QueryInterface call
on the COM component for the interface with IID '{872D23A7-C18D-468C-895D-1CF027E4FBB1}'
failed due to the following error: Library not registered.
(Exception from HRESULT: 0x8002801D (TYPE_E_LIBNOTREGISTERED)).
3) MsBuild.exe - Running MsBuild on my InstallShield project file yields this error:
error NSB4025: The project file could not be loaded. Invalid character in the
given encoding. Line 1, position 1
The choice between these approaches (when they all work) largely depends on the build system you are trying to integrate with. If you're using a batch or makefile approach, IsCmdBld.exe is probably the easiest starting point. If you're using Visual Studio and TFS or MSBuild, you'll probably have more luck there, as it will report errors in a way the build system can understand. (Other than that, they're fundamentally similar.) If you need to make tweaks to the project before you build it, the automation layer can either augment or replace the other approaches.
But in your case you say they all don't work. What have you done to diagnose why? Here are the first steps I'd take for each of those symptoms:
IsCmdBuild built setups yielding an error that the IDE-build ones do not. First identify what the problem really is. Look in a verbose log for more information. Build both ways with the .msi available and compare the results with MsiDiff. Make sure you've tested elevated. Depending on what you find, it may be something to address in the project, the build process, or a bug in InstallShield.
Automation Interface yields TYPE_E_LIBNOTREGISTERED. First off, if this is the IDE machine, consider repairing the installation. If it's a standalone-build machine, ditto. If it's a standalone-build machine that didn't use the installation, you should, or at least you should ensure the dependencies are present and that the automation interface is registered. Secondly, as Christopher Painter noted, InstallShield is a 32-bit product so it must be invoked from a 32-bit context. If you're calling, say, CScript to run a .vbs file, make sure you're using C:\Windows\SysWow64\CScript.exe.
MSBuild NSB4025. The comment from stijn is largely correct - you can't call MSBuild on the .ism file (while it can be xml instead of binary, it's not MSBuild-compatible). However you can create a .isproj file that can work correctly. Save the project in Visual Studio, or copy <InstallShield>\Support\0409\MSBuild.xml to (ProjectName).isproj and tweak its contents; call MSBuild on the resulting .isproj file. Odds are strong this will have approximately the same results as IsCmdBuild, as the build portion is largely shared.
Using MSBuild doesn't follow the exact order of the Project files specified in the solution .sln file.
The best option is to use devenv.exe
And sometimes, devenv doesn't return exact return status, so I kept an exe to scan the log file for the success code.
https://devopsdiaryblog.wordpress.com/2017/12/20/devenv-return-code-issue/
And for iscmdbuild.exe, better to use commandline as it is the suggested one from flexera.
Related
I've tried for many hours to find the solution for my problem and couln't find it even here.
So I have that application.exe that I am writing the Wix Toolset installer for it. Unfortunately I have no access to the source code but I hope I can do my task without it.
The problem is that it runs correctly with vc_redist.x64 installed on the end user's machine, but not without it.
What I've tried:
I was trying to run it without those runtimes and got into "couldn't find vcruntime140.dll error"
So I pasted it in the app's folder and tried to move on with dll's and the next error occured as shown in picture:
the application was unable to start correctly (0xc000007b). Click OK to close the application
I've read those runtimes after installation go into eg. "C://Windows/System32"
so I tried to go to that location and
dir > before.txt
and
dir > after.txt
after installing the vc++ runtime.
and copy pasted the files that occured only after the installation.
I tried to use gumpbin.exe from Visual Studio that gave given output:
found some dependencies
and the Dependency Walker gave me kind of similar output.
Dependency Walker output the same libs as direct ones, but also gave imo about hundreds of indirect ones. So I thought copy/pasting all of them is a really hard job without software to help.
I was also thinking about forcing vc_redist.x64.exe to extract files to folder given by me so I could use them for my purpose and the only parameter that looked fine was /layout but it only copied the whole .exe to another folder. Didn't extract it.
My questions is:
is there an easy way of obtaining the vc_redist.x64 libraries so I could author only the needed ones in my installer?
Any help will be appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Edit:
My goal is to secure newbie end users from being unable to run the application when they accidentally uninstall the VC runtime, therefore having vc_redist.exe as prerequisite in bootstrapper is unfortunetely not the case
When running a Coverity build I get the following error:
Failed to locate msbuild.exe when handling devenv template configuration. Shutting down resident msbuild processes is impossible.
Can't find it in Google!
Does anyone know what this might mean?
How do I investigate this?
When I build from command line without Coverity it works fine.
When you start cov-build devenv one of the things it tries to do is kill off idle msbuild.exe processes because if they are not killed, devenv will pass the build directive to msbuild without cov-build being able to see it (and that's how it knows how to build your files).
There are a few ways you can resolve this - it depends on how you are invoking cov-build, how your compiler configuration is set up, etc. For example, you could call cov-build msbuild directly rather than going through devenv.
I would recommend opening a support case with Coverity (since you have support if you have a license for it). E-mail them at support#coverity.com and I'm sure they can suggest additional debugging steps.
I'm trying to get TFS team-build to reliably build a WPF C# app. This app relies on a VB6Lib.dll which we maintain, this VB6Lib.dll itself relies on other C# libs that we also maintain.
I've set up a build definition to build (in order):
VbDependencies.sln (all libs in this have com interop set, thus the VB6 can find their TLBs)
buildVB6Lib.proj (an msbuild file which calls "VB6.exe /make /d" to make the VBLib.dll on the build server, as part of this script I've been copying the VB6Lib.dll output to C:\tmp)
MainApp.sln (in my workspace, I've added a reference to C:\tmp\VB6Lib.dll)
Does this sound ok
?
On my dev laptop I usually build the VB6, copy its output to \tmp and then regsvr32 it there before adding a reference to it in my C# solution. It's this step that I'm not convinced my build def is doing.
Also, is there a way to get more useful output from the VB6 build, currently I get "Compile Error in File 'xxx.bas' Can' find project of library", but not which actual library it can't find.
You are correct in that the critical point in your build process on the development system lies in registering the COM object. However, one does not in general want to register the COM object on the build server, as this can cause all kinds of versioning issues and silent failures when the wrong COM object is registered or the registration fails.
The proper way to accomplish this is to generate an interop assembly manually and reference that instead of the COM object. This is accomplished with the tlbimp utility, for instance:
tlbimp ..\Libraries\VBLib.dll /out:..\Libraries\Interop.VBLib.dll
Run that command on your development system, then remove the reference to VB6Lib.dll and add a reference to Interop.VBLib.dll. You can then add the tlbimp command as a prebuild event in the referencing project so that the interop assembly is always build from the correct version, and you will never again need to have your COM object registered on the build system.
Do any GUIs exists for processing and running rake, msbuild or nant files?
Although I don't mind working with the command line I still find that I occasionally have to delve into rake/msbuild files to find out exactly what a task/target does or what arguments they expect.
Ideally I'm looking for something that lets you only input valid arguments for the task/s you're running.
There is a GUI for MSBuild called MSBuild Explorer
I'm trying to run this batch file from a windows service (running as my own user) and msbuild doesn't work. Running it directly however, works. I'm getting a buch of "The handle is invalid" on stderr from I presume vcvarsall.bat.
rem Load compilation environment
call "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat"
rem Load the All Solutions.sln program
msbuild "C:\AutoBuildCheckout\Other Projects\All Projects\All Projects.sln"
pause
I'm confused. Anyone have any suggestions?
-Isaac
Services in Windows Vista and higher run in a separate desktop, and therefore don't have access to stdin, stdout, and stderr. (Services can no longer 'interact with desktop'; you'll notice that option is missing from the services applet in Control Panel.)
EDIT: After the comments below... A service IMO is the wrong solution. There are continuous integration products that manage this for you, like Hudson or CruiseControl; I'm sure there are many others. See also Continuous Integration at Wikipedia for more info.
My solution was to just not call vcvarsall.bat. Instead I'm directly summoning msbuild from where it sits in the windows directory. So I got around the problem without really knowing the solution.