Re: [WiX-users] Question about including large number of modified files...
What I'm doing in a situation much like that is using an interpreted
language to generate my .wxs files... That way, I have control over how
the GUID's are generated.
I have to admit I use Perl to do it, but you could do it in another
language, as long as it can generate type 4 GUIDs (the ones in a
specific namespace)
Here's first-pass Perl code to do it, because it's what :
(This code just prints the component and file tags to standard output,
so it could be redirected into a file. It assumes there are no
subdirectories. If so, I'd put the directory reading code into a
subroutine and recurse as you find subdirectories.)
#!perl
use 5.006;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::UUID qw();
use IO::Dir qw();
use File::Spec::Functions qw( catfile );
my $download_site = 'http://www.site.invalid/my-program/';
my $dir_to_read = 'C:\\my\\build\\site';
my $guidgen = Data::UUID-new();
# Generate my own namespace to use for the rest of my GUIDs.
my $ns = $guidgen-create_from_name( Data::UUID::NameSpace_URL,
$download_site );
my $dir = IO:::Dir-new($dir_to_read);
if ( !defined $dir ) {
die(Error reading directory $dir_to_read: $!);
}
print 'EOF';
?xml version='1.0' encoding='windows-1252'?
Wix xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/wi'
Fragment Id='Fr_Directory'
DirectoryRef Id='D_DirectoryId'
EOF
my ($id, $guid, $filename);
my $file = $dir_object-read();
while ( defined $file ) {
if ( ( $file ne q{.} ) and ( $file ne q{..} ) ) {
$filename = catfile( $dir, $file );
$guid = uc $guidgen-create_from_name_string($ns, $filename);
$id = $guid;
$id =~ s/-/_/g; # To change dashes into underlines for the ID.
print EOF;
Component Id='C_$id' Guid='$guid'
File Id='F_$id' Source='$filename' /
/Component
EOF
}
# Next one, please?
$file = $dir_object-read();
}
print 'EOF';
/DirectoryRef
/Fragment
/Wix
EOF
exit 0;
--
Curtis Jewell
swords...@csjewell.fastmail.us
%DCL-E-MEM-BAD, bad memory
-VMS-F-PDGERS, pudding between the ears
[I use PC-Alpine, which deliberately does not display colors and
pictures in HTML mail]
On Wed, 25 Feb 2009 11:15 -0800, Tabmow tabmo...@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
I'm new to wix, and have looked at the tutorial at tramonta and
searched
around various places, but the answer to this isn't immediately obvious
to
me, so I was hoping someone could help shed some light on it.
Our installer will be installing 3 large directories. Two of them are
completely static 3rd party stuff that will not change at all for the
release. However, the third directory is our main product build output,
so
that changes weekly. My question is: how do people deal with
situations
like this? I've looked at tallow paraffin, and looks like I can use
them
(paraffin looks very nice) to build up my lists for inclusion in wxs file
which will work perfect for 2 of the 3 directories files. However,
the
third directory will change every week and there could be new files,
files
deleted, new directories, etc. Since all the stuff on tallow/paraffin i
could see does not recommend re-running them on every build (so as not to
have all new GUIDs and break component rules), I could run paraffin once
and
then every other build of my installer i could just do a paraffin
-update...
But then if new files get added one week, the next week -update would
give
them a different GUID unless I had some way of knowing when the new files
were changed and to save that change. Asking designers to inform us of
file additions/removals is not feasible - ~100 designers.
So for that one directory that *could* change frequently, I could just
store
it as a zip file (this is what gets created by as a build artifact
anyway)
in the MSI and unzip it, couldn't I? Although lots of responses towards
people asking questions about using Wix to handle zip files are very
negative towards using zip files... so how are people handling situations
like this? I would have assumed this was a common problem?
I hope my point/question makes some sense. I would appreciate any
help/suggestions/comments anyone has.
Thanks!
--
Curtis Jewell
swords...@csjewell.fastmail.us
%DCL-E-MEM-BAD, bad memory
-VMS-F-PDGERS, pudding between the ears
[I use PC-Alpine, which deliberately does not display colors and pictures in
HTML mail]
--
Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA
-OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise
-Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation
-Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD
http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H
___
WiX-users mailing list
WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Re: [WiX-users] Question about including large number of modified files...
Tabmow wrote: Can i confirm one thing with you guys: if i do this, RemoveExistingProducts will still work to get rid of the previously installed version irregardless of whether the 'changed' files have different GUIDs in the new installer, right? Yes, though there are some bugs around major upgrades and assemblies in the GAC, if you're using managed code. -- sig://boB http://joyofsetup.com/ -- Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H ___ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
Re: [WiX-users] Question about including large number of modified files...
Tabmow wrote: Thanks Bob. We won't be using managed code. Excuse my ignorance, but what is GAC? Global Assembly Cache, where managed assemblies are native SxS assemblies are installed. -- sig://boB http://joyofsetup.com/ -- Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H ___ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
Re: [WiX-users] Question about including large number of modified files...
Bob Arnson-6 wrote: Tabmow wrote: Thanks Bob. We won't be using managed code. Excuse my ignorance, but what is GAC? Global Assembly Cache, where managed assemblies are native SxS assemblies are installed. ok. Thanks again Bob. -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Question-about-including-large-number-of-%22modified%22-files...-tp2385558p2392388.html Sent from the wix-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H ___ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
[WiX-users] Question about including large number of modified files...
Hi all, I'm new to wix, and have looked at the tutorial at tramonta and searched around various places, but the answer to this isn't immediately obvious to me, so I was hoping someone could help shed some light on it. Our installer will be installing 3 large directories. Two of them are completely static 3rd party stuff that will not change at all for the release. However, the third directory is our main product build output, so that changes weekly. My question is: how do people deal with situations like this? I've looked at tallow paraffin, and looks like I can use them (paraffin looks very nice) to build up my lists for inclusion in wxs file which will work perfect for 2 of the 3 directories files. However, the third directory will change every week and there could be new files, files deleted, new directories, etc. Since all the stuff on tallow/paraffin i could see does not recommend re-running them on every build (so as not to have all new GUIDs and break component rules), I could run paraffin once and then every other build of my installer i could just do a paraffin -update... But then if new files get added one week, the next week -update would give them a different GUID unless I had some way of knowing when the new files were changed and to save that change. Asking designers to inform us of file additions/removals is not feasible - ~100 designers. So for that one directory that *could* change frequently, I could just store it as a zip file (this is what gets created by as a build artifact anyway) in the MSI and unzip it, couldn't I? Although lots of responses towards people asking questions about using Wix to handle zip files are very negative towards using zip files... so how are people handling situations like this? I would have assumed this was a common problem? I hope my point/question makes some sense. I would appreciate any help/suggestions/comments anyone has. Thanks! -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Question-about-including-large-number-of-%22modified%22-files...-tp2385558p2385558.html Sent from the wix-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H ___ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
Re: [WiX-users] Question about including large number of modified files...
Hey, First, I just want to re-iterate the difficulty in doing dynamic creation of WIX source files (wxs). See what Bob Arnson had to say ( http://www.joyofsetup.com/2008/12/30/paying-for-upgrades/). Second, it looks like you are using WIX 2.0 as you mentioned tallow.exe. In WIX 3.0 this has been replaced by heat.exe. You may want to look into moving to the newer version of WIX. Hope that helps, Brian Rogers Intelligence removes complexity. - Me http://icumove.spaces.live.com On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 11:15 AM, Tabmow tabmo...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, I'm new to wix, and have looked at the tutorial at tramonta and searched around various places, but the answer to this isn't immediately obvious to me, so I was hoping someone could help shed some light on it. Our installer will be installing 3 large directories. Two of them are completely static 3rd party stuff that will not change at all for the release. However, the third directory is our main product build output, so that changes weekly. My question is: how do people deal with situations like this? I've looked at tallow paraffin, and looks like I can use them (paraffin looks very nice) to build up my lists for inclusion in wxs file which will work perfect for 2 of the 3 directories files. However, the third directory will change every week and there could be new files, files deleted, new directories, etc. Since all the stuff on tallow/paraffin i could see does not recommend re-running them on every build (so as not to have all new GUIDs and break component rules), I could run paraffin once and then every other build of my installer i could just do a paraffin -update... But then if new files get added one week, the next week -update would give them a different GUID unless I had some way of knowing when the new files were changed and to save that change. Asking designers to inform us of file additions/removals is not feasible - ~100 designers. So for that one directory that *could* change frequently, I could just store it as a zip file (this is what gets created by as a build artifact anyway) in the MSI and unzip it, couldn't I? Although lots of responses towards people asking questions about using Wix to handle zip files are very negative towards using zip files... so how are people handling situations like this? I would have assumed this was a common problem? I hope my point/question makes some sense. I would appreciate any help/suggestions/comments anyone has. Thanks! -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Question-about-including-large-number-of-%22modified%22-files...-tp2385558p2385558.html Sent from the wix-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H ___ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users -- Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H ___ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
Re: [WiX-users] Question about including large number of modified files...
Hi Brian, Thanks for the reply. I fully get the difficulty of doing dynamic creation, that's why I think having a zip file in there would work in this situation, but all the conversations about wix zip files seem pretty negative, hence why I thought I'd ask. Yes, I'm using wix 2.0 - I don't want to move to 3.0 since it's not fully GA yet (i know it's getting close but until it is, our product needs completely stable line and we don't need any new features). Thanks. Brian Rogers wrote: Hey, First, I just want to re-iterate the difficulty in doing dynamic creation of WIX source files (wxs). See what Bob Arnson had to say ( http://www.joyofsetup.com/2008/12/30/paying-for-upgrades/). Second, it looks like you are using WIX 2.0 as you mentioned tallow.exe. In WIX 3.0 this has been replaced by heat.exe. You may want to look into moving to the newer version of WIX. Hope that helps, Brian Rogers Intelligence removes complexity. - Me http://icumove.spaces.live.com On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 11:15 AM, Tabmow tabmo...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, I'm new to wix, and have looked at the tutorial at tramonta and searched around various places, but the answer to this isn't immediately obvious to me, so I was hoping someone could help shed some light on it. Our installer will be installing 3 large directories. Two of them are completely static 3rd party stuff that will not change at all for the release. However, the third directory is our main product build output, so that changes weekly. My question is: how do people deal with situations like this? I've looked at tallow paraffin, and looks like I can use them (paraffin looks very nice) to build up my lists for inclusion in wxs file which will work perfect for 2 of the 3 directories files. However, the third directory will change every week and there could be new files, files deleted, new directories, etc. Since all the stuff on tallow/paraffin i could see does not recommend re-running them on every build (so as not to have all new GUIDs and break component rules), I could run paraffin once and then every other build of my installer i could just do a paraffin -update... But then if new files get added one week, the next week -update would give them a different GUID unless I had some way of knowing when the new files were changed and to save that change. Asking designers to inform us of file additions/removals is not feasible - ~100 designers. So for that one directory that *could* change frequently, I could just store it as a zip file (this is what gets created by as a build artifact anyway) in the MSI and unzip it, couldn't I? Although lots of responses towards people asking questions about using Wix to handle zip files are very negative towards using zip files... so how are people handling situations like this? I would have assumed this was a common problem? I hope my point/question makes some sense. I would appreciate any help/suggestions/comments anyone has. Thanks! -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Question-about-including-large-number-of-%22modified%22-files...-tp2385558p2385558.html Sent from the wix-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H ___ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users -- Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H ___ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Question-about-including-large-number-of-%22modified%22-files...-tp2385558p2386018.html Sent from the wix-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off
Re: [WiX-users] Question about including large number of modified files...
Hi, Glad you like Paraffin. :) What you're asking to do is extremely hard, if not impossible, to accomplish with windows installer. Paraffin was designed for the case where the base files are stable and you're adding files to the installation. If you have such radical changes in files, you may want to do is always go the major upgrade route and schedule an uninstall of the previous version. That way you don't have to worry about the individual files changing. The always brilliant Bob Arnson write about this here: http://www.joyofsetup.com/2008/12/30/paying-for-upgrades/ Hope it helps! John Wintellect http://www.wintellect.com 877-968-5528 -Original Message- From: Tabmow [mailto:tabmo...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 11:16 AM To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [WiX-users] Question about including large number of modified files... Hi all, I'm new to wix, and have looked at the tutorial at tramonta and searched around various places, but the answer to this isn't immediately obvious to me, so I was hoping someone could help shed some light on it. Our installer will be installing 3 large directories. Two of them are completely static 3rd party stuff that will not change at all for the release. However, the third directory is our main product build output, so that changes weekly. My question is: how do people deal with situations like this? I've looked at tallow paraffin, and looks like I can use them (paraffin looks very nice) to build up my lists for inclusion in wxs file which will work perfect for 2 of the 3 directories files. However, the third directory will change every week and there could be new files, files deleted, new directories, etc. Since all the stuff on tallow/paraffin i could see does not recommend re-running them on every build (so as not to have all new GUIDs and break component rules), I could run paraffin once and then every other build of my installer i could just do a paraffin - update... But then if new files get added one week, the next week -update would give them a different GUID unless I had some way of knowing when the new files were changed and to save that change. Asking designers to inform us of file additions/removals is not feasible - ~100 designers. So for that one directory that *could* change frequently, I could just store it as a zip file (this is what gets created by as a build artifact anyway) in the MSI and unzip it, couldn't I? Although lots of responses towards people asking questions about using Wix to handle zip files are very negative towards using zip files... so how are people handling situations like this? I would have assumed this was a common problem? I hope my point/question makes some sense. I would appreciate any help/suggestions/comments anyone has. Thanks! -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Question-about- including-large-number-of-%22modified%22-files...-tp2385558p2385558.html Sent from the wix-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H ___ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users -- Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H ___ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
Re: [WiX-users] Question about including large number of modified files...
John Robbins wrote: If you have such radical changes in files, you may want to do is always go the major upgrade route and schedule an uninstall of the previous version. That way you don't have to worry about the individual files changing. The always brilliant Bob Arnson write about this here: http://www.joyofsetup.com/2008/12/30/paying-for-upgrades/ Well, usually, perhaps...g An interesting scenario is to use major upgrades during product development and use Paraffin during servicing lifetime. The challenge there is to make sure everyone knows that just because you're shipping a service pack, doesn't mean they have free reign to change the world. -- sig://boB http://joyofsetup.com/ -- Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H ___ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
Re: [WiX-users] Question about including large number of modified files...
I assume the changes are logged into a revision control system of some kind; what we are doing is keeping fragments of WiX as versioned properties of the associated files and directories. When we do a new build, we grab the revision history, pre-process the WiX as necessary, shove the results into a WXS file, and off we go. We are still working out some of the kinks in terms of nested information; forcing a separate component for each file and directory certainly helped. Hope that helps, Thomas S. Trias Senior Developer Artizan Internet Services http://www.artizan.com/ Original Message Subject: [WiX-users] Question about including large number of modifiedfiles... From: Tabmow tabmo...@gmail.com To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net Date: 2/25/2009 1:15 PM Hi all, I'm new to wix, and have looked at the tutorial at tramonta and searched around various places, but the answer to this isn't immediately obvious to me, so I was hoping someone could help shed some light on it. Our installer will be installing 3 large directories. Two of them are completely static 3rd party stuff that will not change at all for the release. However, the third directory is our main product build output, so that changes weekly. My question is: how do people deal with situations like this? I've looked at tallow paraffin, and looks like I can use them (paraffin looks very nice) to build up my lists for inclusion in wxs file which will work perfect for 2 of the 3 directories files. However, the third directory will change every week and there could be new files, files deleted, new directories, etc. Since all the stuff on tallow/paraffin i could see does not recommend re-running them on every build (so as not to have all new GUIDs and break component rules), I could run paraffin once and then every other build of my installer i could just do a paraffin -update... But then if new files get added one week, the next week -update would give them a different GUID unless I had some way of knowing when the new files were changed and to save that change. Asking designers to inform us of file additions/removals is not feasible - ~100 designers. So for that one directory that *could* change frequently, I could just store it as a zip file (this is what gets created by as a build artifact anyway) in the MSI and unzip it, couldn't I? Although lots of responses towards people asking questions about using Wix to handle zip files are very negative towards using zip files... so how are people handling situations like this? I would have assumed this was a common problem? I hope my point/question makes some sense. I would appreciate any help/suggestions/comments anyone has. Thanks! -- Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H ___ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
