Greg K and others who might be interested - Oleg Shilo’s WixSharp / Wix# recently has been given a new feature, documented well with a CodeProject article.
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/804584/Wixsharp-WixSharp-UI-Extensions “Wix# (WixSharp) UI Extensions” Taken from the most recent article: Wix# was first released and described in this CodeProject article: Wix# (WixSharp) - managed interface for WiX <http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/31407/Wix-WixSharp-managed-interface-for-WiX> . Wix# answers many MSI authoring challenges. It solves the common MSI/WiX authoring limitations in a very elegant and yet unorthodox way. Wix# follows the steps of other transcompilers like Script#, CoffeeScript or GWT by using source code of a more manageable syntax (C# in this case) to produce the desired source code of a less manageable syntax (WiX). A "more manageable syntax" in this context means less verbose and more readable code, better compile-time error checking and availability of more advanced tools. Also Wix# removes necessity to develop MSI sub-modules (Custom Actions) in the completely different language (e.g. C++) by allowing both the components and behavior to be defined in the same language (C#). This also allows homogeneous, simplified and more consistent source code structure. Despite of all this there is one category of the setup authoring problems that Wix# didn't address so far: MSI custom UI. The current article by Oleg Shilo in CodeProject addresses the remaining problem, using two approaches to UI. Both are described in the article, but this quote begins an explanation of the external UI approach – (it is) possible to implement fully isolated, self sufficient UI (with no MSI dependency) and "connect" it at runtime to the MSI engine running your MSI file. I’ll leave you to read the article and test the code, and the efficacy of WixSharp, for yourself/selves. _____ Ian Thomas Albert Park, Victoria From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Friday, October 03, 2014 10:13 AM To: ozDotNet Subject: MSI failures This is just a heads-up and I'm recording my own thoughts. I mentioned several weeks ago that setup projects (vdproj) support can return to VS2013 via the Installer Projects Extension <http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/9abe329c-9bba-44a1-be59-0fbf6151054d> . I was most pleased by this and have resurrected many setup projects and have been using them successfully ... until I tried them on Windows XP and Server 2003, which results in "The installer was interrupted" failure on the first wizard step. Examining an msiexec log shows "DIRCA_CheckFX return value 3". Ensuring that Framework 4 and Installer 4.5 are present makes no difference. Extensive web searches reveal no useful advice, but there are a few hints that it's a bug in the setup project templates (which I think is feasible!). I used orca to disable the failing conditions inside the MSI's sequence tables and it got the wizard through to the 3rd wizard step, but then I received some weird entry point failure in InstallUtil. At this point I officially gave up. So I remain confused about the exact cause of this problem, or the cure: is it the old operating systems, some dependency, or a bug in the setup templates. Uh?! Maybe I should consider migrating permanently to WiX, which I'll do if I can find a nice GUI over it so I don't have to write XML by hand. Greg K P.S. Setup project generated web installers require IIS 6 metabase compatibility on if you're using IIS 7. This didn't wasn't relevant to my situation above, but it was worth mentioning as lots of people have stumbled over this subtle dependency when the installation fails with the same unhelpful "interrupted" failure.
