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.
Related
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.
I've started playing with Managed Boostrapper Classes and events. Making story short, I've added BoostrapperCore.dll and it would give you the namespace
Microsoft.Tools.WindowsInstallerXml.Bootstrapper
I was able to get some info from some examples present in different blogs. For instance, the Entry point is BootstrapperApplication.Run(), is called when bootstrapper application is ready to run.
Then there are events like:
BoostrapperApplication.DetectBegin
BoostrapperApplication.DetectPackageBegin
BoostrapperApplication.DetectForward
etc, etc...
Question: Is there any precise documentation/online help which provide the details and sequence of Events and Methods present in Microsoft.Tools.WindowsInstallerXml.Bootstrapper namespace?
That would definitely save a lot of time...
Regards
While the source code is on git, I'm yet to find a significant amount of documentation for these events.
As far as order goes, a the WiX bootstrapper has 3 main phases (all of which happen asynchronously)
Detect
This is when the Burn engine tries to figure out what (if anything) is already installed. The bootstrapper application starts this process by calling Engine.Detect, which you will probably want to do as soon as the bootstrapper starts, as you need the outcome of this in order to decide whether to show install, uninstall or upgrade UI.
During this phase the engine will raise the OnDetect... events to tell the bootstrapper application about what it finds.
Plan
This is when the Burn engine figures out what its going to do. The bootstrapper application starts this process by calling Engine.Plan, specifying the desired operation (e.g. Install, Uninstall, Upgrade etc...). This is normally done right before the Apply phase, e.g. after the user clicks on the "Go" button). The OnPlan... events are raised in this phase.
Apply
This is when the Burn engine actually installs or uninstalls packages in the bundle, and starts when the bootstrapper application calls Engine.Apply. The vast majority of the remaining messages are raised during this phase for a combination of progress & error reporting, or to allow the bootstrapper application to handle certain things (e.g. OnResolveSource, which can be used to prompt the user to find file that the engine cannot locate)
Apply has two sub-phases, Cache and Execute.
There are only 3 events that I can see that are not raised during one of these 3 phases:
OnStartup, which is raised when the bootstrapper first starts (the base bootstrapper application calls the Run entry point as part of handling this event)
OnShutdown, raised when the bootstrapper is exiting
OnSystemShutdown, raised when the WM_QUERYENDSESSION window message is received
The events you absolutely need to handle are OnDetectComplete, OnPlanComplete, OnApplyComplete, which will happen in that order.
One of my CA's tried to detect which feature was selected using MsiGetFeatureState and modify HKLM using its state, but it alayws returns INSTALLSTATE_BROKEN. I put this CA before "InstallFinalize".
So I wonder if this is expected and how I can do this. Thank you in advance.
Please see: Obtaining Context Information for Deferred Execution Custom Actions
A deferred cusom acton ( which commit is ) can't call MsiGetFeatureState. Only an immeadiate custom action can. If the information is needed in the deferred it must be marshaled using CustomActionData. For more information, read Installation Phases and In-Script Execution Options for Custom Actions in Windows Installer.
Also please realize that commit custom actions don't execute when rollback is disabled.
I'm not really sure what you mean by "modify HKLM using it's state" but in general you should use the registry table to declare registry updates. Don't reinevent the wheel as it's generally less robust.
You should avoid modify the features in the registry. i'm not sure if it's allowed to query feature states thru the api while installing the same product. you may get an old/wrong answer. but what you can do, is to set some property's and use them within the custom action. Take a look at the msdn "Conditional Statement Syntax". there are some symbols which allow you the query features-actions and feature-states (or components).
I need to embed, invoke and run some custom code as part of my custom managed bootstrapper application, as a post-install step. This custom code is within a class library that I have included as a reference in my MBA project. So, right after the state becomes InstallationState.Applied I plan on invoking this custom code. However, I am unable to figure out how I could tie in a failed state of this custom code to initiate the bootstrapper to rollback, since the progress callback would have been completed by now. Any ideas?
As per WiX & Burn's lead dev Rob Mensching here, point-2, it seems any custom code that needs to facilitate rollback in the setup process should be run as a custom action, and not as part of the bootstrapper application, as I wanted to. I went ahead and did as Rob suggested, and everything works as expected. However, since the custom action runs significant code, I may in future put that in a WiX extension.
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" />