It seems to me that Wix is being unsupportive of something that Windows Installer allows. The InstallExecuteSequence table of an MSI contains references to both the custom actions defined in the MSI directly as well as in the merge modules. You can go in and modify this table directly (using Orca) however you like, and the MSI essentially doesn't know whether an item in the table was merged in from a merge module or directly by the install. Thus, in my opinion, Wix is not allowing something that Windows Installer fully supports, and this seems wrong to me.
I'm not suggesting that it is good design to code things such that a merge module defines a custom action, and the main install schedules it. I'm just suggesting that Wix is attempting to force people into a good design, and in this case i don't appreciate it. It's like you're forcing some sort of moral standard on me rather than letting me make that decision (and possibly mistakes) for myself. Our install is really old and minimal maintenance is only done as needed. I've just upgraded it from Wix 1.0 to Wix 3.0 (like I said, it's an old install...), and am running into many issues due to the poor design choices that were originally made, but were allowed by Wix 1.0. These issues relate around the fact that our main install can no longer schedule the merge module custom actions. We have 3 main installs consuming our merge modules, and some of the merge module actions are scheduled in different orders or with different conditions (usually based on main install properties) between the various installs, so I really cannot move the scheduling of these items into our merge modules. For these, i've pulled the custom action definitions into a wix fragment so that I can keep the scheduling in the main install. But then there are other custom actions that I have had to leave defined in the merge modules and schedule them there because they set merge module properties. But scheduling these is becoming a problem because the order depends on other custom actions that are now scheduled by the main install. It's a mess! So, as you can see, upgrading to wix 3.0 is giving me a much bigger headache than I foresaw, which is why I'm a bit perturbed that the wix toolset is forcing this moral standard upon me, especially since it didn't in the (very) old days. And yes, our install is obviously very poorly designed (not by me), but so far it's worked for us, and it's just going to take a bit more work than I thought to get it working with wix 3.0. Thanks for listening to me grumble... -Tina On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 10:29 PM, Bob Arnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Tina Basinger wrote: > > Maybe this is not supported any more. Should I be able to have the main > > installation code schedule a custom action that is defined within a merge > > module? Any thoughts? > > > > Merge modules are designed to be self-contained, which is why they have > the modularization GUID attached to their IDs. They should schedule > their own custom actions. I'm not aware of any way to do what you want > with WiX, except using .wixlibs instead of .msms. > > -- > sig://boB > http://joyofsetup.com/ > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's > challenge > Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great > prizes > Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world > http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ > _______________________________________________ > WiX-users mailing list > WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
