I'm trying to learn how to write MSI installer. I'm using WiX, and I'm curious. My application comes with the dependencies to the followign MFC and CRT libraries:
mfc90u.dll
msvcr90.dll
How do you install those?
There are some choices listed here. I recommend using the appropriate redistributables instead of installing individual DLLs.
With WiX 3.6 and later, you can create a chainer that runs multiple installers. You can create a VS project for that with a WiX Bootstrapper template.
Distibuting the vcredist dlls as private DLLs creates security risks for the user, and is discouraged, however if you distribute the version mentioned it must live in a subfolder of the app folder with a name specified in msdn docs. It is far better to use the vcredist exe (even if your app does not need all of the vc redist files),or the related msm. The location of the msm or private dlls is part of your VS installation and detailed in the VS redistribution license. The vcredist exe is available from microsoft's site. There are many different versions of the vs 2008 redist. Open your binary in a text editor and search for manifest to read the embedded manifest which details which version of the vcredist you need to deploy. Never take anything from the SXS folder. Regarding wix you can add the msm to your msi but there are issues with doing that. The prefered method is create a Wix bundle using the vcredist exe.
Related
I have an application which I have built in Visual Studio 2012, one part of which is in C# and one part of which is in C++. The GUI for the application uses a third party GUI control.
Consequently I have three dependencies that need to be checked for and installed with my project:
The Microsoft Visual C++ redistributable
The .NET framework 4.5
The GUI control
My installer for the project is currently built using WiX. Is there a way to make WiX do the following?:
At install time check for the presence of (e.g.) the C++ redistributable and install it if it is not present
Remove these components at uninstall (if and only if they were installed at install time, obviously)
If not, my guess would be that the answer is to create another C# project which can run each msi in turn, but I'd like to be able to do the whole thing through WiX - is it possible? If so, how?
WiX has added to its original purpose of being a Windows Installer toolset. It now has a bootstrapper/chainer/bundler/reboot manager/package manager, sometimes called Burn. In Visual Studio, it is accessible via the WiX Bootstrapper project template.
You'd need to have a WiX Setup project for your application. Then define a chain sequence for the four setups. VC and .NET should be marked permanent because you don't known if and when they should be uninstalled. Same thing probably goes for the GUI control. That leaves your application, which the bootstrapper will uninstall when it is uninstalled.
You could create a bootstrapper to install your application and its prerequisites.
WiX toolset provides all necessary tools for you to create a bundle that contains different packages, one of it would be your own MSI.
Have a look at Burn and the WiX toolset documentation. The How To Guides show ways to achieve exactly what you want, for example there is a tutorial describing how to Install the .NET Framework using a bootstrapper.
Maybe the Standard Bootstrapper Application is what you are looking for. Or have a look at customized Managed Bootstrapper Applications. For example the fancy Visual Studio 2012 installer is a WiX MBA. But be warned, in my opinion a MBA is a lot of work.
How can I deploy my Win32 application as an EXE application so that others (who don't have VC++ installed) can use it?
I am using VC++ 2010 on Windows 7.
If you switch to "Release" mode when you compile your finished program (rather than "Debug", which you use for debugging it during development), you should get an executable that will run on a computer without Visual Studio installed.
However, that executable will still require the appropriate version of the C runtime library to be installed. For example, if you developed it in Visual C++ 2010, you will need version 10 of the CRT installed. This is a freely redistributable library, downloadable here.
So, you have several options for deployment:
Manual Deployment
Give people the bare executable file, and include the installer for the redistributable in another folder on the installation media. If they copy the executable to disk and cannot run it because they get an error message, they should install the CRT libraries from the included redistributable installer. Then the executable will run just fine.
This works great if you have relatively a computer-savvy audience, or you're deploying to a fixed range of machines (like across a school or corporation). But it doesn't work so well for general deployment to customers.
In fact, you don't even need the installer. You can just place the CRT DLLs in the same folder as your executable and it will run just fine. This is how I test apps I'm developing on clean VMs. It works like a charm. There's no need to run the CRT installer at all. You'll find these required libraries as part of your Visual Studio installation:
<Program Files folder>\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\redist\x86
Automated Deployment
Create a setup program that automatically installs your application along with any dependencies it requires, including the CRT redistributable. This is what you see most commercial applications doing. I recommend it for anything but the most trivial of apps.
Full versions of Visual Studio 2010 (i.e., not Express versions) can create a Setup Project that you can customize as needed to work as an installer for your application. But this is no longer the recommended way to create an installer, and this functionality has been removed from the latest version of Visual Studio, 2012.
So I recommend using something else, even if you have an older version of VS where the Setup Project is available. No point in wasting time creating something you'll just have to update later. My personal favorite choices for creating setup programs are WiX and Inno Setup. Both are free, and extensive documentation is available online.
Creating simple setups that don't have to do very much is really quite straightforward—this is likely the case for you, as all you need to do is install the CRT redistributable if it is not already there. I'd be willing to bet money you can find a walkthrough or example online for how to do this in either WiX or Inno Setup.
If you need to do more complicated stuff, both of these setup packages support it. They are extensively customizable and very powerful, it just takes more work to get it all going.
Static Linking
If you absolutely need to be able to distribute a bare executable that is guaranteed to simply work when double-clicked, you will need to switch your project to statically link in the required runtime libraries. This means that all of the CRT code is actually embedded by the linker directly into your executable, and means that you don't have to redistribute the CRT libraries separately.
The disadvantage of this approach is that the only way to benefit from improvements, bug fixes, and security patches released for the CRT is to recompile and redistribute your application. If you dynamically link (the default), your app will automatically benefit from enhancements to the installed version of the CRT libraries. Microsoft strongly recommends against static linking.
To switch between these modes in Visual Studio, follow these steps:
Right-click on your project in the Solution Explorer and select "Properties".
Ensure that the "Release" configuration is selected in the drop-down box at the top of the dialog.
Expand the "C/C++" item in the TreeView, and select "Code Generation".
Change the setting of the "Runtime Library" option to "Multi-threaded (/MT)".
A further description on what these cryptic compiler switches mean and which ones you should use when is given in my answer here.
Final Note: The "Debug" versions of the CRT libraries are not redistributable, but that doesn't matter because you should always distribute the "Release" build of your app anyway, never the "Debug" build.
In general, the odds are pretty good your EXE file will run on any version of Windows you built it on or higher.
All bets off, for example, if you built using Visual Studio 2012 Professional on Windows 7, and you try to run it on Windows 95. But otherwise, you're probably safe :)
The best way to test if you have any dependencies is to install and run on a "clean machine".
The best way to get (and reuse) a "clean machine" is with a VM.
I recommend VMWare. But Virtual Box and Windows Virtual PC are also viable choices.
As far as an installer, I'd strongly encourage you to look at InnoSetup
I hope that helps!
Make sure you build in release mode. As Floris Velleman said, you're using unneeded libraries for standalone executable.
For more information, you can check Compiler Options (MSDN).
How to replace a strong named DLL in GAC by the windows installer?
I am having two installers that shared some common DLLs from the GAC.
suppose there is any change in any common DLL then
running any one installer with latest DLL is not replacing the existing DLL.
from some old post, it is suggested that changing file assembly version will replace DLL.
that approach is not working. Is there anything else needs to be done apart from that?
Windows Installer will not update an assembly in the GAC if you only change the assembly file version unless your install authoring tool also sets the fileVersion attribute for the assembly in the MsiAssemblyName table of the new MSI.
Aaron Stebner addresses this in his blog posting.
I know that this works when using WiX, as I've done this in several installers. I don't know how this might be done in other authoring tools.
I'm using the Visual Studio Setup project. If I go to the properties of the Setup project, it lets me choose which pre-reqs are required, at which point I choose the C++ Redistributable.
On some systems, this works fine - but recently my users are reporting that the install failed because "A newer version of Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable has been detected on the machine."
What's the proper way to do this? Is Visual Studio's detection fouled up somehow and unable to detect C++?
Yuck, this is ugly. I was wondering what would happen after Microsoft gave up on the side-by-side install of the runtime DLLs for VS2010. Seems clear, the interwebs are full of this installer error. The biggest victim seems to be Microsoft itself with Streets and Maps failing to install.
I'm not aware of any security patches for it so I have to guess that you haven't updated to SP1 yet. And your customers use a product of a vendor that did. This is a battle that you're always going to lose some day. Do consider taking advantage of the app-local deployment for the DLLs, copying them in the same directory as your main EXE. Simply copy them from the vc/redist directory before putting the setup package together, no need to tick the prerequisite. You'll need:
msvcr100.dll and msvcp100.dll for the regular CRT
atl100.dll if you use ATL
mfc100.dll, mfc100u.dll, mfcm100.dll, mfc100u.dll if you use MFC (u = Unicode, m = managed)
mfc100xxx.dll where xxx is the 3 letter language code if you use MFC on a non-English machine
vcomp100.dll if you use OpenMP in your code.
Only disadvantage is that they won't get updated if there's a security patch. That could be an advantage too, depending on what color glasses you wear. If you're uncomfortable about it then keeping the machine that creates the setup package updated, including enabling Windows Update, is an important requirement.
The default Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable uses a Product Code for detection. So Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable is not detected as installed. This is why the package tries to install it and fails.
A good solution is to create your own custom prerequisite which uses a better detection criteria. Here is an article which may help you:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2010/05/05/10008146.aspx
Visual Studio setup projects do not support custom prerequisite creation. However, it can be done by manually generating the required manifests.
You can find the manifests structure here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229223(VS.80).aspx
These manifests can be generated automatically with the Bootstrapper Manifest Generator tool.
After generating the package manifests, you can add all these files (including the package) in a separate folder in the Visual Studio prerequisites folder, for example:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages\
This way Visual Studio will show the prerequisite in your setup project properties page.
I have an app that on first installer run needs a boostrapper where you can choose the language of the installed app, install .net framework if it's not there yet and some other prerequisites.
I've taken a look at the WiX How To: Install the .NET Framework Using a Bootstrapper
but I don't see how to use this for other custom prerequisites.
What's the best bootstrapper to use for this?
After the app is installed we have an update check on the app startup. if a new version exists we need to download it and upgrade the software.
This wouldn't be a silent upgrade because the EULA and some other stuff might change in the meantime so we still need a GUI for those checks in the updater msi. So i'm considering different options on how to do this.
My first thought was to have 2 separate installers.
The first one would be with the bootstrapper and full GUI, the other would be with minimal GUI for updates.
Is there a better option?
I'd also like the access to the update installer on the to be limited to only users that have the software actually installed.
i'm not quite sure of the best way to do this.
I'm familiar with the WiX upgrade process itself with the upgrade code etc... so that's not the issue.
I'm just looking for a way to design all this in the best way possible.
Any ideas are appreciated. I'm using WiX 3.0.5419.0 from Visual Studio 2008.
I've taken a look at the WiX How To:
Install the .NET Framework Using a
Bootstrapper but I don't see how to
use this for other custom
prerequisites.
You can use the same technique (i.e. the msbuild GenerateBootStrapper task) to install custom prerequisites, but you'll have to author your own bootstrapper packages.
One way to do this is to study the existing bootstrapper packages in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\ (or the ones in the Windows SDK) and read the documentation of the Bootstrapper Manifest XML format. The bootstrapper generator tool might also be helpful.
As for auto-updating your application: it's not supported by wix. I believe there were once plans to add this functionality under the name clickthrough, but I don't think those plans ever matured. If they did, I can't find any documentation about it.