In the wix major upgrade, I have a set of features and the end user has the option to install either typical, custom or complete features.
In case of wix patch release, is it possible to give the user the same option of typical, custom or complete installation type.
Else during the deployment can wix patch detect which features to be deployed based on the installation done in a system. i.e if a system is installed with typical installation then the wix patch update only those components that belong to typical installation. and if a system has a custom installation with only feature X then the patch update should update only those components that belong to feature X.
Thanks for help in advance.
No, it is not possible to let the user select the features again. That would be a MajorUpgrade with the msidbUpgradeAttributesMigrateFeatures attribute and showing the Custom Setup dialog.
In a Minor Upgrade / Patch the original feature installation states are remembered. If you need something wierd like an EXE/DLL is installed but during the patch uninstalled, you'd need to look at the concept of "puncturing" components using the msidbComponentAttributesTransitive attribute.
Related
We are using the WIX Toolset among other things to automate a long installation process. A big part of this is installing lots of prerequisites that change based on what version of the product the customer wants to install.
e.g. there is a filter pack (.msi file) involved in the installation that only needs to be installed with a certain type of the product, so it is impossible to simple chain it into a bundle because we cannot know in advance which version the customer chooses.
Is there any way to solve this problem without having to create 4 different installers or installing all prerequisites regardless of version?
Thanks in advance.
The easiest and most maintainable (imo) method for implementing this is to use a burn bootstrapper and have a separate msi install for each version of the product the user could install.
The burn boostrapper would also contain all the prerequisite packages needed but only install the ones required by the specific version the user chooses to install.
You say you can't include the filter pack in the chain because you don't know until runtime whether or not the customer wants it but that's the whole point of the bootstrapper. Your bootstrapper should gather the information at runtime and set variables accordingly. Using the InstallCondition on the MsiPackage element you can determine whether or not you need to install the msi or not.
The bootstrapper process is to run Detect, do the UI, Plan, Execute. During Plan you will figure out which packages will be run and installed during the installation. The bootstrapper application has the authority to set any package to install or uninstall, overriding whatever the engine decides to do.
You could also include all the msi version stuff in one MSI and control it via feature groups which would allow you to use one MSI fo all the versions of your product but this can get bloated and complicated with multiple 'duplicated' components from different versions of your product so I think this would become a maintainability hell later on.
You can add a custom dialog which has checkboxes where the user can choose what to install.
These checkboxes set a variable to 0 or 1. You can use these variables in the installcondition.
I believe you can even conditionally show checkboxes(say 2 off the 5 are already installed, you would not want to give the user the option to install the already installed 2)
Having an issue with WIX installer upgrade. Previously we had 2 version of installers 1 for per-machine and another for per-user.
Currently we have developed a dual mode MSI.
The dual mode MSI upgrades the PerUser version (on PC 1) of previous installer when install for yourself option is selected but when install for all (on PC 2 ) is selected it install a new product
Is it some wrong that we are doing or is have to set some properties. We are using WIX.
Please help
Per-user installs allow the installation of the same product multiple times for different users - and in different versions too. This makes upgrades and patches rather difficult to deal with, and I dislike this per-user concept altogether. I prefer to set the installer per-machine as standard. I don't feel that much is lost in functionality, but a lot is gained in managability. Though this is not an answer to your question, it is worth pointing out that per-user installs is a flawed concept - at best.
I don't know if it is an option to set your installer per-machine, but I found a way to migrate installs from per-user to per-machine automagically by using Installshield and its custom ISSetAllUsers custom action. The procedure is described here:
windows Installer - uninstalling previous version when the versions differ in installation policy (per-user, per-machine)
Wix does not feature such a custom action as far as I know, but you could write your own custom action using the Win32 API call ::MsiEnumRelatedProducts() as described by Rob Mensching here: how to change from per user to all user installation?
Here is a similar post for reference: How can a perUser installation program deal with a perMachine older version of the program?
Here is a blog describing (further) issues with per-user installs: Understanding “Per-User” or “Per-Machine” context for application Setup packages.
Let me add a couple of further comments:
You can have per-user settings without a per-user install. This is no problem, just have the application set up the userprofile on launch. I prefer to install all resource files and settings per-machine and have the application copy them to each user for first launch initialization. This ensures that user settings are not entangled with your MSI at all.
It is rare to maintain two separate versions of the same product at the same time - hence users are all likely to use the same version of the product. Per-user is just more headache in this perspective.
The upgrade and patching logic involved in per-user installer scenarios beats me - it just doesn't make any sense to me. If there is a per-machine install already, does a per-user install make sense to you? Does this install the application one more time?
If per-user installs are still important, perhaps you can try ClickOnce (if it still works). Quote from Wikipedia: "...ClickOnce-deployed applications are considered 'low impact', in that they are installed per-user, not per-machine. No administrator privileges are required to install one of these applications. Each ClickOnce application is isolated from the others. This means one ClickOnce application is not able to 'break' another.". Per-user installs make more sense if they are hooked up to auto-updating and web-deployment.
If you had two setups before, it might be that you have two upgrade code and need to deal with both for the upgrade to work in all cases?
It has been a long time since I dealt with per-user stuff, but in general you must author your Upgrade table to include both upgrade codes for your setups to detect all flavours of your previous install. The upgrade table allows you to detect any number of prior installs that should be scheduled for uninstall before your new product gets installed.
The FindRelatedProducts MSI action will search all packages on the target machine in order to find any where the Upgrade Code property matches the value specified in the upgrade table.
Make a verbose log file as has been suggested:
msiexec.exe /I "File.msi" /QN /L*V "C:\Temp\msilog.log"
/I = run installation sequence
/L*V "C:\Temp\msilog.log"= verbose logging
/QN = run completely silently
I believe this is occurring because in your installer the default mode is Per-User hence it is not detecting per-machine.
You could use MSIGetProductInfo to find the installed products if the assignmenttype is “1” then you could set the below properties to Product Code of Per-Machine product
WIX_UPGRADE_DETECTED
OLDERVERSIONBEINGUPGRADED
Use a custom action on button click or schedule it after FindRelatedProducts.
This tells the installer of an existing version and installation is handle like an upgrade.
Windows Installer does not upgrade between per user and per machine, or vice versa. If you want this to happen you need to get in front of the install somehow and find out what type is already installed. Trying to do that when the product has been installed for another user (i.e. not the current installing user) is tricky. MsiEnumRelatedProuctsEx can be called a couple of times looking for per machine and per user installs to see what's going on. However there may be issues with you, User A, trying to uninstall a product that was installed per user by User B. If you are the same user it's easier. MsiEnumRelatedProductsEx can be called a couple of times to see if the product is per user or machine (in a launcher maybe) and you can uninstall the product before installing the new upgrade, or at least tell the user to do the uninstall. Anyway, it can be a mess, and the advice to stick with per machine installs is worth taking.
I should also point out that allowing per user AND per machine installs on the same machine is a feature, not a bug.
I would like to create a installer (like BootStarper) to achieve following steps using WiX.
There will be a setup.exe file.
Upon Runnig this file it has to open a UI and show the list of softwares (MSI) available for installation.
The software products are grouped into two Group A or Group B.
Each group may contain Two or more MSI files (Both internal and third party files)
Allow user to Choose a group and one or more products to be installed.
Based on the selection, the products should be silently installed on the local system.
Shall I create a WiX project and display given products(MSI) as its features and can start a deffered custom action to install the seleted ones?
How to author my WiX project to choose the groups and then selected features?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Upgrade to WiX 3.6 (Beta) and take a look at the new "Burn" functionality.
You cannot use a deferred custom action to install another MSI because there is a mutex that enforces one running execute sequence per machine.
There is functionality in MSI 4.5 called multi-package transactions however MSI 4.5 may not be already installed on a 2003/XP/Vista Machine so you'd need setup.exe to boostrap it anyways.
Also "concurrent" installs are deprecated and should not be used to do servicing issues.
This is not something you can solve either with the stable WiX release, or Windows Installer.
You will need a separate bootstrapper to launch your MSI files. as the WiX bootstrapper, Burn is only in the WiX 3.6 beta release and not yet properly documented I would suggest trying something like dotNetInstaller.
My company uses Wix 2.0 in the build chain.
When our users try to install a later build over an older one, the old build is replaced IF the major version number is the same. Otherwise, we let them have a side-by-side install so they can evaluate the new version before buying (no charge for minor version number updates).
However, I'd like to offer the user the choice of replacing any previous version.
From what I know of Wix, this would mean making the OnlyDetect attribute of the UpgradeVersion element dynamic somehow.
Is this possible without a custom action that hacks the table? The msi will be launched from a .exe gui so I can set properties and the like.
You don't want to use OnlyDetect. You author the Upgrade element (or use the helper MajorUpgrade element if using WiX v3.5+) to do the upgrade and then condition the RemoveExistingProducts action. No hackery necessary.
I have an existing large WiX install that has already been released. I need to create a small install for just a couple of files that have changed. I have created a patch (.MSP file) in WiX for these few files using the "PatchCreation" element. When the patch is run, it presents the user with a "Reinstall/Repair/Remove" dialog. If the user selects repair, the patch does exactly what it is supposed to. My problem here is that I don't want the patch to say "repair," or to give the user these options. I just want it to install over the few files I have, more or less like a regular install. What can I do to fix this?
MSI implements patches as repairs. In WiX v3.5, the WixUI dialog library has dialogs that are displayed when installing patches.
I have found a more flexible way to work around this, thanks to some help I found here. If you start MSIExec with command-line options (for example, "msiexec /p [patch file] REINSTALL=ALL REINSTALLMODE=omus"), you can get the install to start up without the "Repair" option coming up. You can also use the IExpress tool (which is shipped with Windows, and can be brought up in a command-prompt) to create a wrapper/bootstrapper that will start the MSP file from MSIExec.
Thanks very much to the answers I received. I would not have figured this out without your help.
I partially agree with Bob. Patches in WiX are applied through a repair, but Windows Installer does support a standalone patch installation. Other setup authoring tools can create them.
Regarding the WiX patch, I recommend using a custom bootstrapper which applies the patch automatically.