Here's my two cents. Let's ignore setup for a moment and just talk about your application.
When something goes in the GAC, it's usually because 1) Many different products/components depend on it ( otherwise we could just deploy it privately ) 2) We want to leverage Strong Naming to establish a contract that says this assembly will be compatible for it's clients Think System.Windows.Forms.dll. Now I'm being told that this assembly you want to GAC could change frequently and that you don't want to have to redeploy your MSI when it does. I have two big concerns here: 1) If it's not your DLL, how can you be sure the strong name won't change? 2) When it does change, how can you be sure it will be perfectly backwards compatible with your code? Take .NET. Microsoft releases very few service packs and hotfixes because they know they have to be very very careful to not cause harm when fixing important things. They move on to a whole new versions of the framework instead when they want to make bigger changes. Will the vendor or team of the assembly you want to GAC treat you with the same respect? If the answer is no, I would consider deploying it privately and following your own process for when deciding to include newer versions of that component in your software baseline. Chris Christopher Painter, Author of Deployment Engineering Blog Have a hot tip, know a secret or read a really good thread that deserves attention? E-Mail Me ----- Original Message ---- From: Blair <os...@live.com> To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. <wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net> Sent: Fri, June 18, 2010 11:45:00 PM Subject: Re: [WiX-users] GAC an assembly without embedding it within the MSI How does that file get on customers' machines and why didn't the original author have it GAC'd in their distribution of that file? Could it possibly not be intended for use from the GAC? Might that create a security issue? What if the original installation needs to remove or upgrade that file, and doesn't know about its entry in the GAC? It won't be upgraded, which could then present a separate security risk caused by the now-false believe that applying updates fixed all copies of the bad code. Also, your setup should be regenerated every time any of its inputs change. Otherwise a repair could very well undo your updates performed outside of MSI. -----Original Message----- From: Sajo Jacob [mailto:spja...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, June 18, 2010 9:11 AM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: [WiX-users] GAC an assembly without embedding it within the MSI I want to GAC an assembly already present on target machines, I know where this assembly is on every machine (you can assume, that path is static for all target machines and wont change) I do not want to include the assembly to be GAC'd in the MSI since it can change with each software deployment and we dont want our setup to be modified each time . I tried using the <File> tag with Assembly =".net" <File Id="Assembly.dll" Name="Assembly.dll" Assembly=".net" Source="Assembly.dll" KeyPath="yes" > </File> but using File embeds my assembly in the MSI. Any ideas on how to just tell the MSI to just look for the assembly in a particular location and not include it? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- ThinkGeek and WIRED's GeekDad team up for the Ultimate GeekDad Father's Day Giveaway. ONE MASSIVE PRIZE to the lucky parental unit. See the prize list and enter to win: http://p.sf.net/sfu/thinkgeek-promo _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ThinkGeek and WIRED's GeekDad team up for the Ultimate GeekDad Father's Day Giveaway. ONE MASSIVE PRIZE to the lucky parental unit. See the prize list and enter to win: http://p.sf.net/sfu/thinkgeek-promo _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ThinkGeek and WIRED's GeekDad team up for the Ultimate GeekDad Father's Day Giveaway. ONE MASSIVE PRIZE to the lucky parental unit. See the prize list and enter to win: http://p.sf.net/sfu/thinkgeek-promo _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
