A
Arun Bhalla
I'm working with VS.NET 2003 and .NET 1.1 (not SP1) on Windows XP SP1. My
application is using the Windows Installer Bootstrap. (I may have also
installed a module which detects requirements (.NET 1.1 -> MsiNetAssembly
Support.) I have a few issues and questions regarding the MSI and its
properties.
* This may be my biggest annoyance at the moment. When the installer creates
the target directory, it's setting them as read-only. When the application
is uninstalled, the target directory is not deleted, although it's empty. I
presume this is because the target directory is read-only and the installer
doesn't try to force the removal, but I'm not positive. Why is this
happening, anyway, and how can I correct it. I'm not certain if this has
always been a problem for me with this project, but it's also not a recently
new problem.
* When the user opts to install for "Everyone," I need to modify the
registry for all users. I'm not sure there's a reasonable way to do this
within VS.NET's IDE (or otherwise?). The User/Machine Hive is an alias for
HKLM when "Everyone" is selected, so that's no help. HKEY_USERS only seems
useful (ever) for setting within the .DEFAULT tree, but that doesn't handle
current users. I've seen a reference to HKEY_PER_USER, which seems like what
I'd want, but I don't know how to access it, and there's almost zero
documentation online, so maybe it's vaporware. I suppose I could handle this
programmatically, in a custom action, but it seems like a common enough
need, and I'd rather have the installer handle as much as possible, anyhow!
Plus, how can the custom action know that it's supposed to set keys for all
users? Can the custom actions access the MSI's runtime properties?
* For that matter, I'm not sure there's a good way for users' configurations
to be retained during an upgrade, and possibly my real problem here is that
I have RemovePreviousVersions set to True. But if an installer is supposed
to remove its files and registry keys it created, and if the installer is
supposed to first uninstall previous versions (which makes sense in my
case), then how are previous configurations supposed to migrate forward?
* There doesn't seem to be a good way for defining deployment projects in
terms of solution configurations. For instance, I can configure the project
within a certain solution configuration (e.g. Debug) to add some conditional
compilation constants (e.g. TRACE, DEBUG), and I can use those constants in
my code within #if blocks. How can I do something similar within a
deployment project? One solution I've heard is to create a different
deployment project for each solution configuration that has its own needs.
That seems like a management nightmare beyond the simple case!
Thanks for any comments or answers you might provide.
Arun
application is using the Windows Installer Bootstrap. (I may have also
installed a module which detects requirements (.NET 1.1 -> MsiNetAssembly
Support.) I have a few issues and questions regarding the MSI and its
properties.
* This may be my biggest annoyance at the moment. When the installer creates
the target directory, it's setting them as read-only. When the application
is uninstalled, the target directory is not deleted, although it's empty. I
presume this is because the target directory is read-only and the installer
doesn't try to force the removal, but I'm not positive. Why is this
happening, anyway, and how can I correct it. I'm not certain if this has
always been a problem for me with this project, but it's also not a recently
new problem.
* When the user opts to install for "Everyone," I need to modify the
registry for all users. I'm not sure there's a reasonable way to do this
within VS.NET's IDE (or otherwise?). The User/Machine Hive is an alias for
HKLM when "Everyone" is selected, so that's no help. HKEY_USERS only seems
useful (ever) for setting within the .DEFAULT tree, but that doesn't handle
current users. I've seen a reference to HKEY_PER_USER, which seems like what
I'd want, but I don't know how to access it, and there's almost zero
documentation online, so maybe it's vaporware. I suppose I could handle this
programmatically, in a custom action, but it seems like a common enough
need, and I'd rather have the installer handle as much as possible, anyhow!
Plus, how can the custom action know that it's supposed to set keys for all
users? Can the custom actions access the MSI's runtime properties?
* For that matter, I'm not sure there's a good way for users' configurations
to be retained during an upgrade, and possibly my real problem here is that
I have RemovePreviousVersions set to True. But if an installer is supposed
to remove its files and registry keys it created, and if the installer is
supposed to first uninstall previous versions (which makes sense in my
case), then how are previous configurations supposed to migrate forward?
* There doesn't seem to be a good way for defining deployment projects in
terms of solution configurations. For instance, I can configure the project
within a certain solution configuration (e.g. Debug) to add some conditional
compilation constants (e.g. TRACE, DEBUG), and I can use those constants in
my code within #if blocks. How can I do something similar within a
deployment project? One solution I've heard is to create a different
deployment project for each solution configuration that has its own needs.
That seems like a management nightmare beyond the simple case!
Thanks for any comments or answers you might provide.
Arun