You will run into problems if you attempt to execute an installer in the middle
of another installer. Windows Installer enforces only one active installation
at a time.
######################################
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-----Original Message-----
From: A. Logan Murray [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2008 11:15 AM
To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.
Subject: Re: [WiX-users] .NET Bootstrapper, Self-Extracting Executables
Ah, excellent. Glad to know it's planned. Good codename too, fits well
with the theme. :)
I'll keep fiddling around for a workaround in the meantime, but I do
have one more related question:
3.
Is it possible to launch an embedded .exe file (namely
DotNetFx35ClientSetup.exe) using a custom action if WiX determines that
the level of .NET framework is not sufficient (i.e. do the bootstrapping
manually)? What I'm thinking is extract that file to a temp directory,
then execute it using a custom action (qtexec) and wait for it to
complete, continuing if it was successful. The problem is that I don't
know how to write such a custom action, because clearly it cannot be
written in .NET (if I'm using this for a bootstrapper), and I'm afraid I
have never written a native module before.
So I'm just wondering if anyone has ever done this, or would know how
to, and if so could you help me out?
Actually I just had another thought... the .NET framework isn't actually
needed for the installation, only the running of the installed program.
So let's say I actually INSTALL the bootstrapper, then launch it using
its installed path after the installation is successful. I know this is
sort of backwards from how it's normally done, but can anyone see any
problem with doing it that way? Ideally I should still like to be able
to launch my application after the install is complete, so this would
have to happen after the bootstrapper completed. Thoughts?
Rob Mensching wrote:
> 2. The WiX bootstrapper is codenamed "burn" and it will be built in WiX
> v3.5. The lack of a bootstrapper in the WiX toolset is a huge problem and
> based on feedback, people wanted a stable WiX v3 before a bootstrapper could
> be added. Thus that's the plan we're executing on.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: A. Logan Murray [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2008 07:22
> To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
> Subject: [WiX-users] .NET Bootstrapper, Self-Extracting Executables
>
> Hi group; I'm new to WiX and have a couple questions that I couldn't
> immediately find answered anywhere.
>
> First of all, I'm looking forward to working with WiX as I like complete
> control over what I build, but in a simple manner, and it looks like
> that's the whole point of WiX, so I'm pretty excited about it.
>
> 1.
> Anyway, I'm developing a .NET app (3.5 sp1 client profile), and
> therefore need to include a bootstrapper. While I managed (by reading
> the wix.chm help file) to get the bootstrapper hooked up by editing the
> project file, I'm not thrilled with the results. First of all, it
> results in a lot of crap being added to the final output directory,
> rather than to the msi file itself, making deployment that much more
> difficult (see my next question). But worse, it doesn't actually work at
> all. The setup.exe file will launch the .NET bootstrapper fine, which
> runs and seems to work properly, but then when that completes I get an
> error telling me that setup cannot locate the file "...MyInstaller.msi".
> It gives me the full path (I hope this isn't being hardcoded), but even
> if I copy and paste that path into explorer, it finds and launches the
> msi fine. So why it cannot find it I do not know.
>
> Ideally I would actually like to avoid having to create a bunch of extra
> and separate files in the output directory. I already have
> DotNetFx35ClientSetup.exe--can't I just add this file to the installer
> as a custom action (that only executes if needed--that's another
> problem, it seems to run/install every time even if I already have the
> framework installed) rather than having to create a bootstrapper? Or
> will that not work for some reason?
>
> If not, I'm also wondering how I might change the command-line arguments
> used to invoke the bootstrapper from the setup.exe. I tried editing the
> C:\Program Files\Microsoft
> SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages\DotNetFx35Client\en\package.xml
> file, but that didn't seem to do a thing.
>
> 2.
> This is one area I feel rather at a loss in, because it seems everyone
> knows something I don't. When you generate an installer, it results in
> an msi file, but as the above question illustrated, this is not always
> the only thing generated. How am I supposed to deploy my program as a
> single file on the web, if the installation is split up into a bunch of
> files and folders?
>
> The only way I've known to do this is to use a "self-extracting
> executable maker" to pack all the different parts into a self-extracting
> .exe that can extract to a TEMP dir and launch a file from the extracted
> archive. My question is does WiX come with this kind of thing built-in,
> or am I forced to use some third-party tool? Or is there something I'm
> totally missing that makes this unnecessary? It seems all the tutiorials
> and manuals only go so far as to generate the .msi, but not how to
> deploy it over the web.
>
> If WiX doesn't have such a feature, is this not something that would be
> valuable to add to the project? I've yet to find the perfect
> self-extracting installer maker (please tell me if you have), and it
> would make things much easier if this were actually part of the WiX
> project or a sub-project.
>
>
> Thanks for your help, I hope WiX will be able to give me the control I
> want over my application's installation process.
>
> Logan
>
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