+1 recommendation for the WiX toolset.
Depending on how complex your requirements are you may not even need a
custom action just to write configuration to an XML file. We've had
success collecting some MSI variables at install time and then using an
xpath expression to save the values to app.config.
On 4/12/2010 10:48 AM, Mitch Denny wrote:
Time to switch to WiX I'm afraid. You can typically migrate your
Installer derived classes to WiX managed custom actions (DTF).
Sent from my Windows Phone
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Greg Keogh
Sent: Saturday, 4 December 2010 8:48 AM
To: 'ozDotNet'
Subject: Visual Studio installer problem
For years now I’ve been making MSI files with the Visual Studio Setup
projects. My setups are all out of the box, the only fancy bit is that
I sometimes use a Custom Action DLL to collect parameters from added
Dialogs and write the values to an XML file for the installed app to
use. I’ve been using the CA for years as well.
Yesterday one of my typical Setup projects became “diseased” and the
first time I ran the installed WinForms app it would run a repair and
overwrite my XML file of collected parameters. This auto-repair runs
the first time I run the installed app. Once this “first-run-repair
disease” sets in, it gets stuck in the project forever. Backing out
changes will make no difference. The only way to cure the “disease” is
to delete the whole project and make another one.
I spent 4 hours trying to overcome the problem yesterday. This morning
I’ve spent another 2 hours creating a fresh Setup project and
bit-by-bit I carefully added changes to the project. When I added
custom BMP images to the setup dialogs the “disease” appeared and is
now permanent again. I find it hard to believe that adding the images
would cause the disease. So I’m going to delete it all and start over
again to try and find a pattern.
6 hours of unpaid work and still counting and people are waiting for
my MSI ... Anyone seem this problem before?
Greg
