CODEWITHSUNDEEP
wixinstallshieldcustom-actioninstallshield-2012dtf
Marek
Marek

Reputation: 496

DTF is copying custom action dll files

I have msi setup that was created in installshield and I am executing the DTF custom action dll as a commit custom action. If I insert MessageBox.Show into the custom action, I can see that there is a temporary folder inside [PROGRAMFILESDIR] called "CustomActionProject.CA.dll-" and there is copied CustomActionProject.CA.dll with all its references.

Is there any way to tell the technology not to create this temp folder and extract+execute the CustomActionProject.CA.dll in the same folder where is .CA.dll located?

Edit:

I found out that I can not include the references in .CA.dll by configuring wix.ca.targets. Which prevents .CA.dll to contain 20MB of dlls in my case.

Now I would like to make sure that CustomActionProject.dll will be able to see the references that are installed with the product.

The files are: 

<ProgramFilesFolder>
  <MyApplicationFolder>
    CustomActionProject.CA.dll
    ... About 30 dlls installed with the application that CustomActionProject.dll needs to call
    <Place I Would Like to See CustomActionProject.dll extracted>

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1070

Answers (2)

Christopher Painter
Christopher Painter

Reputation: 55601

DTF automatically extracts it's files to a temp folder for execution and then cleans up on disposal. This is very good in that it eliminates certain race conditions. You can still author those files into your installer if you like. For example, at a previous company, our installer used several DLL's for license checking during the install and installed them for use by the application at runtime.

BTW, make sure you've seen this:

WiX DTF Behavior Alert

Upvotes: 1

Hille
Hille

Reputation: 4196

Your custom action was programmed in a managed .Net language (probably C# or VB.Net). As msi files may only contain dll custom actions comprised of native code the DTF tools, specifically the tool makesfxca.exe, packs / wraps the managed dll together with helper code resulting in a self extracting, native code dll. Following WIX´s naming convention the native custom action dll contains an .CA infix.

In order for this (i.e. having custom actions written in languages producing managed code) to work, self extraction has to take place. So the short answer to your question is "No".

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions