Re: [WiX-users] Extract files from msi (Msiexec, not WIX issue... .)

[Christopher Painter]

I agree about VSI MSM's... unfortunatly I'm stuck with about 700 of them.  I'm also have about 80 MSM's that were statically written using ORCA because it couldn't be done in VSI and the developer didn't want to use InstallShield.   

It was killing me to be storing MSM's in ClearCase so I tried adopting dark/candle to store XML in ClearCase instead.   Although these merge modules pass MSM suite validation dark/candle just doesn't like many of them.  What should be a fairly simple task of creating a round trip import/export process ends up consuming hours of time.

 

BTW that makes me wonder... is there a custom ICE suite available for running against a database before passing it to Dark?   Basically business rules enforced by WiX that go beyond the ones in the platform sdk?

 

Chris

Rob Mensching <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

The PID_REVNUMBER thing sounds like a bug in dark.

 

If you have a valid MSI/MSM file I do expect dark.exe to be able to decompile it.  However, candle appears to be far more exact about what it allows one to put into an MSI/MSM than some of the other authoring tools out there (I know this is true about VSI because VSI builds really horrible MSI files).  Thus, it may be necessary to “fix” the decompiled source code before being able to recompile it via the WiX toolset.  This is a great way to clean up “dirty MSI files” (like those that come out of VSI).

 

That said if you build a MSI/MSM (that passes validation) using the WiX toolset, I do expect to be able to round trip back to source code then back to MSI/MSM.  My assumption was that Simon was using the WiX toolset already and thus decompiling should work really well.  Derek found many bugs in Dark v2 doing this exact process and fixed them in Dark v3.

 

If the tools don’t work then please file bugs.  Nobody here pretends that the WiX toolset is perfect (yet).  If you don’t want to help make the WiX toolset better then that’s your decision.  However, I would ask that you let those who are trying to improve the WiX toolset to communicate freely here.  This mailing list is about using the WiX toolset and how it should improve.

 

One last thing.  I agree with Derek’s analysis about the bug that was resolved “by design”.  However, if you disagree and believe a bug really needs to be fixed to improve the WiX toolset then the bug should be discussed here.  The goal is to fix the right bugs the right way not hurt people’s feelings by rejecting their bugs.

 

---

From: Christopher Painter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 9:57 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; 'Simon Topley'
Cc: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Extract files from msi (Msiexec, not WIX issue... .)

 

I made this comment because Rob said:

"Have you looked at dark (the WiX toolset decompiler)?  Dark v3 is particularly solid.  It will drop all of the files and .wxs authoring in such a way that the compiler and linker can put it all back together."

This implied an IJW symbiosis between Dark and Candle and it simply isn't true. Instead of acknowledging that YMMV in the `real world`, the MSM to be decompiled is characterized as  `poor authoring`.

Here is another example. I have a collection 70 MergeModules ( that ALL pass validation ).   Each module implements one or many AppSearch patterns.  Dark fails to extract the PID_REVNUMBER out of the Summary Information stream on nearly 40% of them.  When I try to candle them they fail since they don't have  a valid  identifier.    If I look at the  summary info in Orca they are fine.  If I export and import using MSI2XML  its fine.  If I merge the modules into an installer it's fine.

I've really tried to open the door and fit WiX into my existing installer solution but I just got tired of banging my head against the wall trying to make it work.  MSI2XML and MSIDB worked just fine without any effort and I wanted to let Simon know what to expect.


Derek Cicerone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Christopher,

    I'm sorry, but I think its a particularly unfair comment to say that a bug in dark was "scoffed to the side".  I believe the particular issue you are referring to dealt with dark creating output that when compiled immediately produced errors.  I would like to explain why that was done.

 

 

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