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.
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.
I am using the Intellij 11.1.5. We are a large team, and have a pretty complex project setup. so we've made a template and when someone needs a new project set up, we just clone it and she is pretty much ready to go. One other thing i would like to automate is the creation of run configurations. One such configuration starts a custom bat file that requires a parameter representing a path that is user specific. I wanted to know if can store that value as a path variable specific to each project. Maybe somewhere in the .idea folder in my project. I know that Intellij stores it in its .IntelliJIdea11\config\options\path.macros.xml file, but is there a way to tweak that?
Any other idea that would allow me to locally store a parameter passed to the run config script would be usefull.
Thanks
I'm afraid you can't do it in IDEA, but you can use some environment variable directly in the .bat file instead of using the parameter (or rewrite the batch script to detect this value automatically, if possible). Instruct your users to define this environment variable.
IDEA Path variables are global and cannot be made project specific.
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
How can i configure a build definition to allow me to pick a solution configuration at build time?
I have 3 configurations in my solution: (Local, UAT and Live).
I want people to pick and the configuration they need and the build will do the config transforms, deployment etc. as required. I have the build script I need, just need to know how I can switch upon the configuration.
If I cannot use the actual configurations, a custom property would do, but obviously I need to be able to access it in my build script.
My opinion is that your Build Defition should contain all three configurations, so that Build shall execute all three of them by default.Then, you can insert a custom argument in your build process template as an "Configuration Override" with default = empty.Checking this Hofman-post you can have your argument part of the 'Queue new Build dialog.So, when your users queue a new build, they either leave this empty and build executes all configs, or they enter one of the three and only the one selected shall be executed.There are various ways to implement this in your build process template, in general you might want to intervene in section For Each Configuration in BuildSettings.PlatformConfigurations:
and check if your custom argument is empty (so all nodes should execute), or if it is filled with a specific entry (so it should proceed only once). Further handling of a user input that does not comply with any of the available configs should be added, so that build can graciously fail.
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.