I am supporting a vb6 application. I am trying to transfer the executable and DLL to a new server and I am prompted with component not registered errors. I have got round this by manually registering the components on the new server.
I have found two files with file extensions of 000 and 001 that have registry commands in them (registering components) Can anyone explain how these files are generated? I have experience creating installation files in vb.net to a certain extent.
Repackaging and redeployment is not a developer issue and really doesn't belong here. Such issues are more appropriate for someplace like ServerFault.
It is one thing to have lost all of the source code of an application, but even worse in some ways to have lost the deployment package. Sadly some shops fail to archive either of these.
However it was also common enough for shops to see RAD tools like VB6, Delphi, PowerBuilder, etc. as things to shove off on the worst of the worst of their developers. These poor slobs seldom got official Microsoft training that should have emphasized the importance of creating proper installers. For that matter even those courses tended to marginalize the topic. It doesn't help that the Web is full of "Mort teaching Mort" half-baked development even today, or that the pioneers who wrote many of the early serious VB programming books tended to be loose cannons and contrarians who didn't really believe deployment was a serious concern.
The end result is that lots of shops have machines with VB6 programs shoehorned onto them in a half-baked way. Often when deadlines loomed they let Old Mort install VB6 right onto the production server and let him hack away right there! So it's no wonder people get into trouble once a server needs to be replaced or its OS updated.
Those REG files with .000, .001, etc. extensions aren't anything normal that I'm aware of. For all I know they've fallen out of REGMON runs or some 3rd party packaging tool. Manual registry exports created using REGEDIT would normally have .REG extensions.
If you are actually "supporting" this application it implies that you have the source code, VB6 compiler, developer install packages for any 3rd party controls, and a writeup describing any special packaging and installation requirements (target machine DCOM/COM+ configuration, system requirements such as IIS or MSMQ or 3rd party DBMS Providers and Drivers, special folder requirements, software firewall rules, etc.).
From those it ought to be possible to compile a clean new copy of the EXE, DLLs, etc. and create a clean deployment package - even if some configuration still needs to be done manually before and after running the installer.
Without those you are a computer janitor and your question belongs over at ServerFault. It is no fun, I know. I've had to take part in such janitorial services myself all too often.
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I have used InstallAware and InstallShield before, and they are pretty difficult to work with and when something goes wrong it is very difficult to find and resolved the issue.
My question is why can't we use a Windows application written using C# to do this.
I understand that .Net framework may not be installed on the destination computer, so I wonder why no one has ever used this architecture:
I will create a simple installer using IntallSiheld(or any other similar tool) to just install .Net Framework and after that extracts and runs my own Windows application which I have written using C# in elevated mode. My application will run a Wizard with Back and Next button and I will take care of everything in it (copying files, creating and starting Windows Services, adding registry values, creating firewall extensions etc.)
Has anyone ever done this, and is there anything that prevents people from doing this?
In essence: don't try to re-invent the wheel. Use an existing deployment tool and stay with your day job :-). There are many such tools available. See links below.
And below, prolonged, repetitive musing:
Redux: IMHO and with all due respect, if I may say so, making your own installer software is reinventing the wheel for absolutely no gain whatsoever I am afraid. I believe you will "re-discover" the complexities found by others who have walked the path that is involved in deployment as you create your own installer software and find that software can be quick to make, but very hard to perfect. In the process you will expend lots of effort trying to wrap things up - and "the last meter is very long" as you curse yourself dealing with trifles that take up your time at the expense of what would otherwise pay the bills. Sorting out the bugs in any toolkit for whatever technical feature, can take years or even decades. And no, I am not making it up. It is what all deployment software vendors deal with.
Many Existing Tools: there are many existing tools that implement such deployment functionality already - which are not based on Windows Installer (Inno Setup, NSIS, DeployMaster and heaps of other less known efforts):
There is a list of non-MSI installer software here.
There is another list of MSI-capable software here.
My 2 cents - if you do not like MSI, choose one of the free, non-MSI deployment tools. How to create windows installer.
Corporate Deployment: The really important point (for me) is that corporate deployment relies on standardized packaging formats - such as MSI - to allow reliable, remote management of your software's deployment. Making your own installer will not impress any system administrators or corporate deployment specialists (at least until you sort out years of bugs and deficiencies). They want standardized format that they know how to handle (that does not imply that they are that impressed with existing deployment technology). Doing your deployment with standardized deployment formats can get you corporate approval for your software. If you make a weird deployment format that does unusual things on install that can't be easily captured and deployed on a large scale your software is head-first out of any large corporation. No mercy - for real. These are busy environments and you will face little understanding for your unusual solution.
"File-Pushers": Those of us who push files around for a living know that the field of deployment is riddled with silly problems that quickly kill your productiveness in other endeavors - the ones that make you stand out in your field - your day job. Deployment is a high profile, low status endeavor - and we are not complaining. It is just what it is: a necessity that is harder to deal with than you might think. Just spend your time more wisely is what I would conclude.
Complexity: Maybe skim the section "The Complexity of Deployment" here: Windows Installer and the creation of WiX. It is astonishing to deal with all the silly bugs that happen in deployment. It is not just a file copy, though it might be easy to think it is. And if it happens to be just a file copy, then there are existing tools that do the job. Free ones too. See links above. And if you think deployment is only file-copy in general, then please skim this list of tasks a deployment task should be capable of supporting: What is the benefit and real purpose of program installation?
Will your home-grown package handle the following? (just some random thoughts)
A malware-infected terminal server PC in Korea with Unicode characters in the path?
Symbolic links and NTFS junction points paths?
A laptop which shuts itself off in the middle of your file copy because it is out of battery?
Out of disk space situations? What about disk errors? And copy timeouts?
What about reboot requirements? For in-use files or some other reason. How are they to be handled? What if the system is in a reboot pending state and you need to detect it before kicking off your install?
How will you reliably install, configure and start and stop services?
How will you support uninstall and cleanup for your application?
Security software which flags your unknown, unrecognized, non-standard package a security threat and quarantines it? How would you begin to deal with this? Who do you contact to get into the good graces of a "recognized binary" for elevation?
Non-standard NTFS permissioning (ACLs) and NT Privileges? How do you detect it and degrade gracefully when you get permission denied? (for whatever reason).
Deployment of necessary runtimes for your application to work? (has been done by many others before). Download of the lastest runtimes if your embedded ones are out of date? Etc...
Provide a standardized way to extract files from your installation binary?
Provide help and support for your setup binaries for users who try to use them?
Etc... This was just a random list of whatever came to mind quickly. There are obviously many issues.
This was a bit over the top for what you asked, but don't be fooled to think deployment is something you can sort out a solution for in a few hours. And definitely don't take the job promising to do so - if that is what you are being asked. Just my two cents.
The above issues, and many others, are what people discover they have to handle when creating deployment software - for all but the most trivial deployments. Don't waste your time - use some established tool.
Transaction: If you are working in a corporation and just need your files to your testers, you can deploy using batch files for that matter - if you would like to. But you have to support it, and I guarantee you it will take a lot of your time. What do you do when the batch file failed half-way through due to a network error, and your testers are testing files that are inconsistent? Future deployment technologies may be better for such light-weight tasks. Perhaps the biggest feature of a deployment tool is to report whether the deployment completed successfully or not, and to log the errors and to roll the machine back to a stable state if something failed. Windows Installer does a lot of this work for you.
Distribution: A lot of people feel they can "just replicate my build folder to the user's computers". The complexities involved here are many. There is network involved, and network can never be assumed to be reliable, you need lots of error handling here. Then there is the issue of transactions: when do you know when the computer is in a stable state and should stop replicating. How often do you replicate, only on demand? How do you deal with the few computers that failed to replicate. How do you tell the users? These are distribution issues. Corporations have huge tools such as SCCM to deal with all these error conditions. Trying to re-implement all these checks, logging and features will take a long time. In the end you will have re-created an existing distribution system. Full circle. And how do you do inventory of your computers when there is no product registered as installed since only a batch file or script ran? And if you start replicating a lot of packages, how many times do you scan each file to determine if they are up to date? How much network traffic do you want to create? Where does it end? The answer: I guess transactions must be implemented with full logging and error tracking and rollback. Then you are full circle to a distribution system like I mentioned above and a supported package format as well.
This "just replicate my build folder to my users" ideas somehow remind me of this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_distributed_computing. Not a 100% match, but the issues are reminiscent. When networking is involved, things start to become very unpredictable and you need logging, error control, transactions, rollback, network communication, etc... We have re-discovered large scale deployment - the beast that it is.
Network: and let's say you want to replicate your build folder to 10000 desktop machines in your enterprise. How do you kick off the replication? Do you start all replications at once and take down the trading floor of the bank as file replication takes over the whole network like a DDOS attack? Sorry - it is getting out of hand - please pardon the lunacy - but it really is upsetting that this replication approach is seen as viable for large scale deployment with current technology approaches. Built-in Windows features could help, but still need to be tested properly. You need scheduling, queuing, caching, regional distribution shares, logging, reporting / inventory, and God knows what else that a packaging / deployment system gives you already. And re-implementing it will be a pain train of brand new bugs to deal with.
Maybe we one day will see automatic output folder replication based on automatic package generation which really works via an intelligent and transacted distribution system. Many corporate teams are trying, and by using existing tools they get closer with standard package formats used. I guess current cloud deployment systems are moving in this direction with online repositories and easy, interactive installation, but we still need to package our software intelligently. It will be interesting to see what the future holds and what new problems result for packaging and distribution in the age of the cloud.
As we pull files directly from online repositories on-demand we will see a bunch of new problems? Malware, spoofing and injection? (already problematic, but could get worse). Remote files deleted without warning (to get rid of vulnerable releases that should no longer be used - leaving users stranded)? Certificate and signature problems? Firewalls & proxy issues? Auto-magic updates with unfortunate bugs hitting everyone immediately and unexpectedly? And the fallacies of the network and other factors as linked to above. Beats me. We will see.
OK, it became a rant as usual - and that last paragraph is heading over board with speculation (and some of the issues already apply to current deployment). Sorry about that. But do try to get management approval to use an existing packaging & deployment solution is my only advice.
Links:
Stefan Kruger's Installsite.org twitter feed: https://twitter.com/installsite
Choosing a deployment tool:
How to create windows installer
What installation product to use? InstallShield, WiX, Wise, Advanced Installer, etc
Windows Installer and the creation of WiX
WiX quick start tips
More on dark.exe (a bit down the page)
I have a windows service for a schedule some jobs. It will be sold for a price.
I created msi file for setup. After the install, installed folder have an exe file and dll's.(By the way, I am going to install service on customers' computer, so they won't be have msi file) I found out, this installed exe file can be installed with InstallUtil.exe. I have done some research but I cannot found any good explanation. My questions is, how to forbid install with installUtil for installed exe? I am new to this area, any help will be good. Thanks in advance.
If I understand correctly, you want to prevent people using your software without paying for it. Unfortunately, it is impossible.
Your code, when it runs on the client, is fully controlled by the client. While you can make things harder, in the end no matter what you do, it will always be possible to run it without your permission. Take any commercial software and then search on torrent for pirate versions. :)
You can go lengths in trying to secure it, and the effort needed from an attacker may become somewhat higher, but it is logically impossible to prevent copying if all of the code is on the client.
What you can actually do is offer your solution as an online service (like a most commonly a webapp these days). That way control remains with you.
I've used WiX, InstallShield, and other installation generators and have experienced nothing but headaches.
Are there any installation libraries out there that can be linked in to an actual C++/C# program and run as a setup executable and doesn't need to be written in a custom declarative-installation-language ala WiX/InstallShield?
Edit:
The problem is putting complex decision logic in WiX is tedious. Debugging custom actions is a nightmare and debugging managed CAs is even worse. Our CAs need to execute on remote machines due to AD requirements which adds even more hell to the debugging process. When I sit back and ask "What is WiX giving me" the answer is "very little". I'm spending most of my time fighting the WiX system than improving/maintaining. If a library exists that gave transactional file/registry entry support and focused on installer-related functionality, that's what I want.
You're not saying the exact problems you encountered, but you seem unhappy with the usability of the tools you tried. I recommend trying other setup authoring tools to see which one fits your needs best. You can find a list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_installation_software
As a rule of thumb, free tools are hard to use but get the job done and commercial tools are easy to use but they are not free.
Regarding your actual question, no there aren't any installer libraries you can use in your application. You will find only installation engines. You basically choose between Windows Installer (MSI packages and Active Directory support) and proprietary engines which may or may not work the way you want.
When you can live with support for your installer to Windows Vista+ then you should have a look at the Transaction support of Windows for the registry and NTFS. A very good overview can be found at CodeProject.
Yes MSI is very complex but I do think many of your headaches originate from the fact that you are trying to do too much during install.
There is a time to do stuff after installing your software. This time is called first startup where you can do complex things like AD deployment with a user interface that is under your full control which is much easier to debug. But I doubt that you will get rollback support done for failed AD changes.
A rule of the thumb is that you should not change the AD schema to make your software happy since many customers do forbid schema changes. Manager should read this as: You will loose customers due to AD deployment issues. IT admins can have a big influence what software is bought and which not.
If you had problems with MSI it is likely that you hit a wall with not working updates due to unintended MSI component violations. I have done a small writeup about the issues I have encountered so far. There are also many issues lurking with combined x32/x64 installations.
Last year, in 2009 GSoC, I participated with an organization called Winlibre. The basic idea is having a project similar to Aptitude (or Apt-get) and a GUI like Synaptic but for Windows and just to hold (initially), only open source software. The project was just ok, we finished what we considered was a good starting point but unfortunately, due to different occupations of the developers, the project has been idle almost since GSoC finished. Now, I have some energy, time and interest to try to continue this development. The project was divided in 3 parts: A repository server (which i worked on, and which was going to store and serve packages and files), a package creator for developers, and the main app, which is apt-get and its GUI.
I have been thinking about the project, and the first question that came to my mind is.. actually is this project useful for developers and Windows users? Keep in mind that the idea is to solve dependencies problems, and install packages "cleanly". I'm not a Windows developer and just a casual user, so i really don't have a lot of experience on how things are handled there, but as far as I have seen, all installers handle those dependencies. Will windows developers be willing to switch from installers to a packages way of handling installations of Open source Software? Or it's just ok to create packages for already existing installers?
The packages concept is basically the same as .deb or .rpm files.
I still have some other questions, but basically i would like to make sure that it's useful in someway to users and Windows developers, and if developers would find this project interesting. If you have any questions, feedback, suggestions or criticisms, please don't hesitate posting them.
Thanks!!
be sure to research previous efforts on this. Google turns up several similar/relevant efforts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package_management_system#Microsoft_Windows
http://windows-get.sourceforge.net
http://pina.plasmite.com
IIRC there was an rpm for windows at some point
Also I think there was some guy (who used to work at MS) in the news recently that basically is starting up a very similar project. I can't find a link to this now.
But anyway, yeah, it would be awesome if there was such a standard tool and repository.
I can only speak for myself, but obviously I could definitely make use of such a tool as I found your post through googling! ;)
My two use cases for this tool would the following ones:
1. I generally avoid to re-install my system as long as possible (in fact I manage to do so only for switching to a reasonable (not each an every) new version of Windows every few years or to setup new computers). But still I'd like my software to be up-to-date. Neither do I want to have to go to all the web pages and check manually if there are compatibility issues with the new version of Doxygen, Graphviz and the latest version of MikTeX for example, nor do I want to have to navigate to the download pages and run the setups all by myself. I just want to schedule ONE SINGLE (!) tool, which checks whether there are new updates or not and updates those applications which are not in conflict with any other application version.
If it unavoidably happens to me that I have to re-install my system, I don't want to get the new setups neither (and check compatibility). I even don't want to wait for one setup to finish in order to start the next one, I just want to check the tools I need, or even better, I want to simply load my "WinApt XML" batch installation file, which gets the installers and handles the setups sequentially all by itself.
I don't know enough about the architecture of .deb or .rpm but IMHO the most reasonable would be to maintain a DB with only the names, versions, dependencies and the location of the different versions' download locations. I mean, most of the tools available for Windows provide .msi packages anyways, which (I guess) is the application itself and some custom installation properties (really not sure how scripting is handled, but I know that creating a MSI in Visual Studio has very limited abilities to create custom installation steps and I can only imagine this is due to limitations of MSI protocol).
I guess a GUI will be mandatory for Windows users ;) but I personally would prefer the additional ability to handle the setups with the console.
Well, I like the idea and would love to hear from that (or such a) tool in the future.
Cheers
Check out NSIS. It's an open source MSI creator. You might be able to use it as part of your package creation software.
http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page
For the ALT-.Net tool/lib stack there have been some affords in this direction: Horn Get
However, the usability in a real world project has been subject in this SO question.
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I recently had to struggle with one installation project (which uses most popular product for creating installations: InstallShield) to make it work for product upgrades (migrating from one version to another). In the end it turned out that I needed to use one long package code but was using some other. It wasted my 8 hours (testing and debugging installers is a pain).
Now if I think about it, once you are done all the hard part of coding, all you want to is that correct applications, libraries are copied to target computer and user just runs it. Period. This apparently simple task normally turns out to be a tricky one and "being closed to finish date" makes in even harder.
Don't you think deploying a product is made damn difficult on windows which should have been simpler? (or installer really deserves that much attention and I am just being crazy about it?)
Have you ever used simpler deployment schemes such as "copy the folder to wherever you like and run the exe. When you want to remove it, just delete the folder!"? Was it effective and made things simpler?
Painful as it is you need to wrestle with the windows installer for the benefit of your customers. Otherwise you will need to do a lot more work to
Handle situations where for some reason an error occurs during the installation. What do you do next?
Handle issues like security. What if the installing user does not have rights to particular folders/registry keys?
Correctly cleanup after installation
Patching and patch management
Performing additional tasks -- registering COM objects, creating databases, creating shortcuts, creating an un-installation shotcut and so on
Installing prerequisites
Letting users choose which features to install
Your own custom scripts to solve all these problems eventually become a bigger problem than the installation itself!
I recommend that you check out Wix. It's not exactly child's play but it gets the job done. If you install Votive as a visual studio add in you get intellisense to help you strucutre the tags correctly. With the help file you can create pretty functional flexible installations
I don't think you'll see too many disagreements here, especially regarding MSI. I think one thing to keep in mind is to watch the way many programs are using MSI files these days. Displaying UI dialogs and making complex configuration choices with an MSI is very weak simply due to the way Windows Installer was designed, so I've noticed a lot of programs being split into a bunch of baby MSIs that are installed with the minimal UI by a parent setup program. The SQL Server 2008 setup wizard does this. UPS WorldShip does this. And Paint.NET does this, too--the wizard you see is a Windows Forms app, and it launches msiexec itself (you can see the minimal UI of the Windows Installer pop up on top of the white wizard window), passing any configuration parameters as property arguments to msiexec.
A common scenario where this comes up is where someone is tasked with building an installer for an application that has both server and client counterparts. If the user chooses the server option, then they may or may not want a new database to be installed, which means installing SQL Server. But you can't just install SQL Server while you're in the middle of your own installation because Windows Installer won't let you do that. So a frequent solution is to write an app that displays a wizard that allows the user to configure all of the setup options, and then your app launches the MSI files as needed for SQL Server, your server application, and your client application in the minimal UI mode; basically, eschewing the "features" aspect of Windows Installer entirely and moving it up to the MSI level. 4.5's multiple-package installations seems to be a step further in this direction. This format is also especially useful if you also need to loop in non-MSI installers from third parties as part of your installation process, like installing a printer driver for some bizarre point of sale printer.
I'll also agree that Windows Installer lacks built-in support for common deployment scenarios. It's meant for when setup isn't XCOPY, but they seem to miss the fact that setup usually isn't just "files + shortcuts + registry keys," either. There are no built-in actions for setting up IIS Web sites, registering certificates, creating and updating databases, adding assemblies to the GAC, and so on. I guess they take the opinion that some of this should happen on first run rather than being a transactional part of the install. The freely available tooling and documentation has been awful--flat out awful--for the better part of a decade. Both of these issues are largely addressed by the WiX project and DTF (which lets you finally use managed code custom actions), which is why we're all so grateful to Rob Mensching and others' work on that project.
I've had the same experience. Installation can quickly suck up your time as you go down the rabbit hole of "Oh God, I guess I have to become an expert in this too." I second the idea that's it's best to address it early on in your project and keep it maintained as part of your build process. This way, you can help avoid that scenario of having developed a practically uninstallable product. (Trac was an example of this for a while, requiring to track down specific versions of weird Python libraries.)
(I could go on about how Windows Installer sometimes decides to use my slow, external USB hard drive as a place to decompress its files, how it seems to sit there doing nothing for minutes on end on computers that have had lots of MSI installs on them, and how that progress bar resetting itself a bazillion times during a single install is the most idiotic thing I have ever seen, but I'll save those rants for another day. =)
My two cents; please note that I really just know enough about Windows Installer to do damage, but this is my assessment coming from a small business developer just trying to use it. Good luck!
Well, its a lot easier if you build your installer first, make it part of your build system, and let it grow with your project.
I agree, the windows installer drives me insane. But there are a lot of situations that xcopy just doesn't solve. Sometimes you want to install for multiple users, not just the current user. Sometimes you have to register COM objects. Sometimes you have to make a whole bunch of changes to the system, such as registering services to run at startup, connecting to network servers, etc. Sometimes you have users that can't use a command prompt. And you always want to be able to role the whole thing back when something fails halfway through.
Was the whole MSI database approach the best way of doing it? I'm not sure. Would I rather pound nails into my head than write another line of WiX code? Probably. But you have to admit, it does a good job of doing everything you could ever possibly want. And when it doesn't there is always the CustomAction option.
Really, what I would like to see, is better documentation (really, what is a type 50 action? How about giving it a name?) and a lot more easy-to-usurp templates.
And the WiX users group alias does a good job of answering questions.
You should read RobMen's blog. He does a good job explaining why things are the way they are. He has done a lot of thinking (more than any human should) about the problems of setup.
Have you looked at NSIS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullsoft_Scriptable_Install_System ?
And 1: Yes, 2: No
Personally, I mostly agree with #Conrad and #John Saunders. I wrote about this topic a long time ago on my old blog. I think #jeffamaphone has a point about the Windows Installer complexity (and my over attention to setup, in general ) but I believe the Windows Installer is still the best all round option for installation on Windows.
"Once you have done all the hard part of coding", you haven't done a thing if all your hard work doesn't install. Installers need to be built and tested on every nightly build, every night, almost from day one. You need to test that the installer can be built and run, and you need to verify the installation.
Otherwise, who cares how much hard work you've done coding - nobody will ever see your work if it doesn't install!
Note that this also applies to XCOPY.
Another thing: what is your QA testing if they're not testing what your installer installs? You have to test what the customer will get!
For exactly the reasons you state, we've done internal releases, handled by the dev team by copying the required files, and then done the rest of the setup using scripts and our own utilities.
However, for end users you have to have some kind of hand holding wizard, I've used the MS installer from within VS and found it confusing and clunky. After that experience I've avoided the pain by getting others to do the installation step. Can anyone recommend a good .Net installer?
I use Installshield and if you are not trying to do anything too fancy (I why would you) then it's pretty straighforward - set initial setting, select files, set up shortcuts and create setup.exe.
All future updates I handle inside my code - much more convinient to the user