I am new to WiX 3.0 and writing my first installer based on WiX (coming from Wise).
If the product is already installed (in the current version), I want the installer to switch to "repair"-mode automatically. It should behave exactly like as if I would have clicked "repair" in the Windows software dialog.
It must behave like this to fit in the overall installation process of the system.
I read the documentation but can't get hold of the problem...
You can use the Installed property to conditionalize a SetProperty element for REINSTALL and REINSTALLMODE properties. Be careful to test upgrades to ensure that you add the other parts of the condition (REMOVE<>"ALL") so that the upgrade of the old product stays an uninstall and doesn't flip to repair. :)
Related
My requirements are as follows:
If an application with version e.g. 12.0 is installed at C:\Folder1 and a setup with version 13.0 is to be installed in the folder C:\Folder1 then the setup of version 13.0 should uninstall 12.0 version silently and install the latest version 13.0
If an application with version e.g. 12.0 is installed at C:\Folder1 and a setup with version 13.0 is to be installed in the folder C:\Folder200 then the setup of version 13.0 should install the latest version and also retain the version 12.0
Things I have tried :
If I use the upgrade code method to uninstall the previous version then the uninstall of previous versions will happen even if the previous version is installed anywhere on the system.
Using custom action - create a vbscript to read the installed products using WindowsInstaller.Products data and using the Product code created a command to uninstall the application using "msiexec.exe /x ProductCode"
This custom action when added in the "Before File Transfer" section in install shield project, gives a pop-up that "The application is installing the version and to wait till it has completed the process".
The "Wait for Action" property for the custom action is set to Yes.
I tried setting it to "No" as well still same pop-up appears.
If I add the custom action in the section of "After setup complete Success Dialog" in install shield project, then both versions are installed and after the vbscript executes, it does uninstall the previous version.
The problem with this approach is, when I double click on the desktop icon of the application; it starts installing and displays pop-up of the progress of installation. This would be confusing for the customer.
So this approach is not suitable.
We have not added any data in registry so cannot use the registry method to uninstall previous versions.
This is a very basic requirement for any software, but I am not able to make out how to achieve this. Please let me know if anybody has some pointers.
I have Installshield limited edition 2015 and Visual Studio 2015 Professional.
This actually is not a "basic requirement for any software." The basics are if a ProductCode/UpgradeCode is installed upgrade it.
For point 2 you're getting the pop-up because you're trying to run 2 MSI ExecuteSequences at the same time. If you'd like to continue down this road you'll have to move your uninstall action to the UISequence. Beware that silent installs will not run this action since it never hits the UISequence. Also, the better way to head down this road is to build your own bootstrapper (setup.exe) that controls the flow of uninstall/install.
You can't do that because an upgrade (a major upgrade) MSI doesn't care where the previous version of the product is installed. An new MSI with an UpgradeCode (and a few other details) will upgrade an existing product that matches, uninstalling that older product wherever it's installed.
Some Issues (not a complete list):
If you want to install another product and NOT upgrade the existing product then you need an MSI that (for example) has a different UpgradeCode or doesn't do a RemoveExistingProducts.
Your MSIs (old and new) need to set ARPINSTALLLOCATION, so you can ask where they are installed. That lets you compare install locations (but IMO not an ideal solution).
There are issues such as whether the two separate installed products now have the same shortcuts in the start menu, whether there are any shared files in common locations, whether there are any non-shareable items (service names, global event names etc).
There are also maintainability issues, such as how to upgrade or patch two almost identical installed products.
Anyway, I would simply ask the user if they want to an upgrade or a side-by-side install, rather than base that decision on a choice of folder (which seems IMO an unusual side effect of choosing an install location).
The general choices are probably based on having a condition on the RemoveExistingProducts action, based on a command line property or other mechanism. Or, depending on maintainability requirements you could change the upgradecode (with a transform on the command line) so that the upgrade doesn't occur. It's not clear to me that detecting the install location of the previous MSI in the browse folder dialog of the new install is straightforward.
I am afraid MSI does not lend itself too well to this sort of scenario - as you have discovered.
Is this a corporate software, or is it for general, large-scale distribution?
What is the purpose of this multi-instancse approach? Does this MSI effectively install two different versions of the same application?
Instance Transforms: I suppose you could investigate the instance transforms concept. It is intended to allow multiple installations, but I dislike the concept and have never used it actively. I am hence not able to give you the inside story of limitations and gotchas - sorry - maybe someone else can illuminate?
As PhilDW states you can use another upgrade code for the newest MSI, and then install side-by-side with the old installation. Beyond what has already been mentioned you would also need to change all component GUIDs for the new package. WiX allows component GUIDs to be auto-generated based on destination path, but not so for Installshield. The instance transform should be possible to use to install side-by-side without changing all component GUIDs - I believe.
App-V: If you are in a corporate setting, and if I had enough experience, I would also recommend that you check out App-V packaging (virtualization). This allows isolation of applications so multiple versions can run side-by-side. But again, I am not the right guy to give you the inside story. I know there are a number of limitations, but can't elaborate with real-world experience.
Setup.exe Launcher: If your application gracefully handles multiple instances without clashing shortcuts and service name etc... (like Phil describes), then you could install all new versions side-by-side and never uninstall older versions by default via the upgrade table. You could then handle the uninstall of previous versions manually in your setup.exe launcher (if any). I suppose you could use the instance transform concept to install new versions, or you could re-create your setup for each new version with all new component GUIDs and product, package and upgrade GUIDs.
Legacy Installscript Project: I suppose you could abandon MSI and use a legacy Installscript project to deploy your application. I would not recommend this since such projects are problematic for reliable remote management and silent running (both for install and uninstall).
Some links for safekeeping:
WiX - Doing a major upgrade on a multi instance install
I want to install an MSI twice
Disable repair mode and upgrades in wix installer
I am using Visual Studio 2013 installer to package my application. I then make a copy of the MSI, open it in Orca and remove all the dialogs to create a silent package. So I have two MSI's that should be the same other than one is silent and the other is not.
When I upgrade from a previous version (built in the same way) using the non-silent package, everything works perfectly.
However when I upgrade from a previous version using the silent package, it all works apart from I am left with 2 entries in Add/Remove programs. It all works though but looks ugly for the client. When i uninstall the latest version, Add remove programs still has the previous version listed in Add/Remove programs although actually the latest version is still installed.
As I say, the non-silent package works perfectly well, which leads me to think I must have everything setup correctly in Visual Studio and Orca must be doing something I didn't intend.
Any help would be much appreciated.
If you have two entries in Add/Remove Programs then the upgrade didn't work. A common reason is that one of the installs is Everyone and the other is Just me. If you delete the dialogs then you have altered the behavior that sets the ALLUSERS property, and your upgrade could default to Just me. In the absence of a decision to use one of these choices VS setups use ALLUSERS=2 which is defaulting to a per user Just me install, that's the likely reason. Elevation is involved too - VS setups would rather your MSI did a successful Just me instead of a failing Everyone if privilege state is not clear (and in MSI setups it often isn't).
You might need to go to the Property table and set FolderForm_AllUsers to "ALL" and ALLUSERS to 1 to force a per machine Everyone install.
How silent do you want it to be? If it requires elevation to install successfully then you need the elevation dialog to be shown or the install will fail silently if you force a per machine Everyone install.
I am using WiX to install a executable and I have used ManagedBootstrapperApplicationHost for CustomUI.
Is it possible to get the name of the feature being installed at the time of installation ?
If possible then how can we get the name of the feature ?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Features aren't installed one after another. For example if 3 features are being installed, each with 10 files then the InstallFiles action will install all 30 files at the same time. Same thing with registry entries. So you can't display a UI that says "Installing Feature1" and then later on "Installing Feature2" because that doesn't happen. All you can know is that some list of features are being installed.
Your comment asks about finding out whether a feature installed successfully or not. This issue never comes up - there are never some features that install and others that fail. An MSI install is a transaction and it either all works or fails and rolls back and deletes changes it made so that the system is restored to its previous state.
It's not clear why the list of features is so important to display. If you use the MSI's internal UI there is a feature selection dialog where the user selects which features are to be installed; if you use the Burn UI the same thing is available, so the user can see what features have been chosen.
Inside the MSI the list of features being installed (after they've been selected) is in the ADDLOCAL property, but that's the internal name. It could be used to display a list of the features that were installed at the end, but again by definition what was chosen is installed otherwise the install would have rolled back entirely. I don't believe I've ever seen an install where the list of MSI features installed is displayed at the end - it's redundant info. It would be useful to know the scenario you have, or what problem you're trying to solve, and if you believe that you need to display a list because some might install and others might fail then there is no point, as I have said.
We have an installer solution written in Visual Studio 2005 Installer; that calls a C# custom action and we have hit a known issue, regarding the fact that on an upgrade - the old install code is run and not the new code, because Windows is running a cached version of the custom action dll. We know this and although not over the moon about it - we have moved on.
When we release a new version of the installer and a user runs it, we now want it to check to see if an ealier version is installed - if there is one; we want to display a message telling them that they have to remove the old version via Add/Remove Programs. We know if they do a manual uninstall followed by an install, then all is fine and dandy - BUT it doesn't matter how many times we tell our users, via documentation; that this is what they have to do - they will still try and just run the new installer, without removing the old version first.
Therefore, we would like to put up a message and thus force them to to what they are told !! I've seen some installers do this ( though of course not sure what installer package was used to create these ). We only have VS 2005 and of course orca !!
Cheers,
Chris.
This can be done through a custom launch condition:
create a search which determines if the old version is installed (you can search for a component, registry entry or file)
use the search property as a custom launch condition
For example, if the search property is OLD_VERSION, the launch condition can look like this:
Condition: NOT OLD_VERSION
Description: An older version was found. Please uninstall it using "Programs and Features" in Control Panel.
When OLD_VERSION property is set to a value (an older version is found), this launch condition will show the message and stop the install process.
This doesn't quite make sense. Have you remembered to change the package GUID in your new setup? The package GUID identifies a specific setup file, and if two MSI files have identical GUID they will be treated as the same file regardless of whether they are or not. This could trigger a cached version of the MSI to be invoked and all sorts of hell breaks loose.
I would recommend reading up on "major upgrades" which will allow automatic uninstall of the existing version before the new version is installed. You also need to make sure you understand the basics of the technology before deploying to the wild. You must NEVER use identical package GUIDs for any MSI files. It's practically always wrong, and will lead to very mysterious problems.
I can't write up the whole major upgrade solution here, but basically it involves authoring the "Upgrade" table of your MSI to detect versions to uninstall. You need to change the package code, product code and version number (only 3 digits matter) and keep the same upgrade code (two MSI files with the same upgrade code "know" they are related - i.e they are from the same product family). Check MSDN for samples of major upgrades.
NB! If you have deployed MSI files with duplicate package GUIDs to your developer machine, it could have stray installs that must be cleaned up with MSIZap or similar. Use caution, or better yet test your new installer on a clean test system. Developer systems are full of junk and not generally good for MSI testing.
We are using VS2008 native Installer to set up our product. During both installation and product removal, we use Custom Actions to ask the user if he would like to keep his existing DB and settings (if detected).
The arises when the user is upgrading: the Installer starts, recognizes there is a previous version installed, and calls the UnInstaller first. So the user is thus presented with the same Q twice - once during the uninstall of the previous version, and again during installation of the first.
Is there some way to "let the uninstaller" know that it is being called as part of an upgrade, so we can bypass one of the questions?
I'm not sure about the specifics of VS2008, but if you're generating an MSI package you can schedule display of the dialog based on the UPGRADINGPRODUCTCODE property - this is automatically set during an upgrade with the product code of the package that is being uninstalled.