i have multiple environments, build, test, prod etc.
i'd like to create a single installer in wix, which can hold multiple machine.config files. then based on the feature value passed in through the command line only one file will be installed.
conceptualy it sounds easy but i receive an ICE30 error stating that
"ICE30: The target file 'btfrgsa_|[FILENAME]' is installed in '[TARGETDIR]\NETFRAMEWORK40FULLINSTALLROOTDIR64\CONFIG\' by two different components on an LFN system: 'MachineConfigs.WS' and 'MachineConfigs.APP'. This breaks component reference counting.".
what would be the best way to do this?
thanks
Semaj
A couple of approaches:
Create several features and components with files of different names ( 1.config, 2.config ) and then use the CopyFile element to cause x.config to be copied to the real file name. ) This will result in x.config and real.config being deployed but it's harmless and the uninstall will work cleanly.
Identify the differences between the x.configs and use XML changes to apply them at install time using xpath statements.
Related
My program deploys with a configuration option that I've chosen to expose as a feature. This option can be one of two values.
Each configuration changes a set of settings files. They have different input file names (for the sake of example, let's call it option1-config20-lv80.xml), but should be installed to the configuration directory as config20-lv80.xml. Each option has a prefix that should be stripped like that, which also means only one of these options can be selected for install at a time. However, even with conditions preventing the install of one feature when the other is selected, my output is littered with:
LGHT0204: ICE30: The target file 'config20-lv80.xml' is installed in 'path' by to different components... This breaks component reference counting.
How can I give my users the option to choose between these configuration options and get around my ICE30 issues without any negative side effects?
I saw an similar question answered, but I'm not 100% sure how to implement it in wix#, or if there are other ways open to me to achieve my goal without disabling ICE30 validation or creating 2 installers.
A bit rushed, have a look...
Milk & Honey Winnie: In cases like this I prefer to install both files with different names using two different components and then switch between them with an option shown in the application itself. On launch or in the preferences. Makes deployment simpler, it is already complex (section "The Complexity of Deployment"). The linked answer you refer to can work technically, as can more hacky approaches.
Alternatives: I have a long answer here on different ways to install settings files: Create folder and file on Current user profile, from Admin Profile ranging from eliminating the whole file and using internal defaults, to downloading settings files from the network or just relying on clouded web-service settings retrieval from a database. Not 100% match, but maybe give it a skim?
A related issue is when you have a settings file that regular users can't write to. This is a list of approaches for eliminating that condition: System.UnauthorizedAccessException while running .exe under program files.
Installers of previous versions of our software include a Component File that was NOT marked with Permanent="Yes". Now, we wish to read the pre-upgrade contents of this file during the upgrade process, which will overwrite the file with different contents. Is there a good way to do this?
It would help if you said exactly what you were doing that would cause the file to be overwritten. Some major upgrades (is that what you're doing?) will do a complete uninstall of the product first, followed by a complete install of the newer product. If that's the situation then use a custom action sequenced before RemoveExistingProducts to back up the file somewhere so that your application can retrieve the content, or get the content you need before it's ovewritten.
If you are doing a major upgrade sequenced later (such as afterInstallExecute) or you are doing a patch then it is by no means certain that the file will be overwritten because file overwrite rules will not replace a file that has been updated since it was installed. If the application altered the file then this type of upgrade will not overwrite it:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa370531(v=vs.85).aspx
Or in the case that the file is unchanged since it was installed, change the dates so it appears to be modified, as described here:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/astebner/2013/05/23/updating-the-last-modified-time-to-prevent-windows-installer-from-updating-an-unversioned-file/
It's also not clear that Permanent=yes is what you want anyway - that would glue the file to the system forever. You may be thinking of NeverOverwrite, but it's typically not required if the app changes the files, and easier to decide at upgrade time (by changing dates) instead of committing to NeverOverwrite when it's sometimes unclear what the product may need in the future.
A comment refers to retrieving the previous version of the product during the upgrade. There are a number of ways to do this:
If you know the ProductCode of the previous version, MsiGetProductInfo (and equivalents in script etc) will return product version values or strings:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa370130(v=vs.85).aspx
Or if you'd rather not hardcode the value, MsiEnumProducts passing the UpgradeCode will return a list of installed ProductCodes. This technique is most useful if you have your own bootstrapper or UI where you want to show the user the current installed version.
In a WiX major upgrade the associated property (WIX_UPGRADE_DETECTED) is a list of the ProductCodes detected (usually a list of one) so you can use that to get the version of the product being upgraded. In a small vbscript example, something like:
set installer = CreateObject("WindowsInstaller.Installer")
and:
prodversionstring = installer.productinfo(WIX_UPGRADE_DETECTED, "VersionString")
will get you close.
Assuming this file is a configuration file such as an XML file, I find this is just a tough area of Windows Installer. You ship file version 1, the end user modifies certain attributes and then you ship file version 2 to which you want to preserve those customizations.
The problem is this is a very complex merge. It works somewhat OK if you only care about 1-2 attributes but if the answer is I need to preserve all of it then you are stuck between losing all the customizations or not getting the changes from version 2 of the file.
You could write extensive custom actions to do all this during the installer but I propose there is a better way: Have 2 files.
1 file that is owned by the installer and can always be safely overwritten and 1 file that is owned by the application that overrides are stored in. Think of it like a transformation file. The installer doesn't know about this file so it never overwrites or deletes it. (The very definition of user data from an MSI perspective.)
For example the .NET framework Web.Config schema AppSettings element has a file attribute that was designed to support this nicely.
Specifies a relative path to an external file containing custom
application configuration settings. The specified file contains the
same kind of settings that are specified in the , , and
elements and uses the same key/value pair format as those
elements. The path specified is relative to the main configuration
file. For a Windows Forms application, this would be the binary folder
(such as /bin/debug), not the location of the application
configuration file. For Web Forms applications, the path is relative
to the application root, where the web.config file is located.
Note that the runtime ignores the attribute if the specified file can
not be found.
To give you a background - I have a 4 MSI's which comes from our vendor and this has to go to our company servers (we are looking at around 3500 servers). As of now, my counterparts are managing this using vbs, ps1 scripts. But the problem with the script is that everytime an update comes we have to worry about uninstalling the existing package before running the new one and a ton of hardcoding.
I want to automate the whole process (with very less hardcoding) by setting up a WIX script to package all the 4 MSI's together. I read about the WIX bundle and used that to create a single MSI. But now there are lot of a variables to be passed to the 4 MSI's, so I thought of using custom actions to set these variables based on the environment/machine where the MSI is running. But I cant make custom action to work? Am i missing something?
A little bit of googling and I saw something like there are no CustomActions in Bundle? can someone confirm?
Also if there are no CA's what are my options? how can I manipulate the variables to be passed on to the 4 MSI's? Most of them needs to be set based on the machine its being run (like install path, user id's, app pool id's etc).
There is a fourth option, a useful lightweight hack, identified by Vijay Kotecha (see http://vijayskotecha.blogspot.com/2013/07/wix-bootstrapper-custom-action.html),...
Essentially, build an <ExePackage> around a pass-through .bat or .cmd batch file. The batch/command file contains the single line '%*' which re-executes all of the command line arguments as a first class command.
Thus:
<ExePackage ... SourceFile="SourcePath\WixCustomAction.cmd"
InstallCommand="my_custom_action.exe my_custom_parameters" />
<ExePackage ... SourceFile="SourcePath\WixCustomAction.cmd"
InstallCommand="my_next_action.exe my_next_parameters" />
Where WixCustomAction.cmd is a file containing only '%*'.
These <ExePackages> can be placed into the <Bundle><Chain> successively as needed using different InstallCommands as needed.
As I see it, you have three options:
Depending on what information you need, you can use the WixUtilExtension to perform simple tasks such as reading registry keys and performing file searches, which you can then pass the results to your installation packages as properties.
Implement custom actions in the individual installation packages themselves (not in the bundle).
Write your own custom bootstrapper application to determine all the properties you need to set, and then pass them to your installation packages. This is more complex than the #1 and #2, but if your interested the following links should get you started:
introducing managed bootstrapper applications and
write a wpf wix installer
I'm writing an installation code using Wix, and I need to install an entire folder to a certain location, and then copy that folder to several different locations, I could install those same files to those locations using code one by one, but that folder is about 80 Mb in size, so it would increase my MSI size (80 x 3 = 240 Mb).
One solutions I had thought of was compressing the folder into a zip file, and then use the CopyFile element to copy the file, after that, descompress the three folders, but this increases the installation time too much.
Is there a way to do this using native wix code, or is Custom Actions my only solution?
Tnks
WiX's "smart cabbing" reuses one instance of a file's stored data even if it's included multiple times in different directories. See http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2007/6/1/quotSmart-cabbingquot-added-to-WiX-toolset. So you have duplicate authoring but without bloating the .msi.
If you want to do it the way that MSI natively provides, you need to author 3 CopyFile elements for every single file that you want duplicated.
The CopyFile element maps to the DuplicateFile table which is processed by the DuplicateFiles action. It has no concept of */ rather it requires a 1 to 1 mapping back to the File.File_ table/column. ( File#Id in WiX )
You certainly could decide that you hate this pattern and roll your own custom actions to handle the job but if you do, make sure you handle install, uninstall, repair, rollback, upgrades and so on. MSI's restrictions can be annoying but you do get a lot for 'free' (albeit not painless) if you use it.
CopyFile Element
DuplicateFile Table
We have four regions (dev, test, qa, prod) that all require environment specific config files. I am trying to develop a WIX install that will accept a property assignment from the msiexec command line and dynamically set the file source of a config file. I've tried just about everything and read about every page and I can't seem to make it work. This seems like a trivial probleml.
While there are probably ways to pull off what you ask, the traditional approach would be to include all four files, with their respective components conditioned such that your command line property selects exactly one of them to be installed.