CODEWITHSUNDEEP
wixwindows-installer
Ajn
Ajn

Reputation: 583

Putting new dll in exisiting GAC path using wix

I am working on Wix and I have to place a new dll (Let's say New.dll) as a part of MSI installation into a specific path in GAC where some other dll already resides.(Let's say Exisiting.dll. Please note this dll exists before installing my MSI). So is there a way I can achieve this? Please note New.dll contains native code and is not .net assembly. Thanks.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 725

Answers (3)

Tom Blodget
Tom Blodget

Reputation: 20812

The GAC is only for files in strongly-named assemblies. An assembly is a versioned set of files, one of which has a manifest. Creating multi-file assemblies is easy but most tools neither help create nor respect that an assembly may have multiple files. The basic tool is the assembly linker. See How to: Build a Multifile Assembly.

A native DLL can be made part part of an assembly with the /linkresource switch for the C# compiler. If you want to fiddle with a C# project file, you can override the standard Compile target and Csc task with your own that will pass linkresources.

WiX does not handle multi-file assemblies. You have to create File elements for each file in the assembly. All such Files should be in the same Component. This is an instance where having a single component makes sense when Organizing Applications into Components.

If want want a different behavior (that is, replace one of the files), then you have to create a new version of the assembly/Component. Hopefully, that is how the previous native DLL got into the GAC in the first place.

Upvotes: 3

Joe
Joe

Reputation: 335

The first thing you are going to want to do is search for the file on the system... You can do this with the FileSearch WiX statement:

<Property Id="PROPFILESEARCHEXISTINGDLL" Secure="yes">
  <DirectorySearch Id="EXISTINGDLLFOLDERPATH" Path="[WindowsFolder]\assembly\" Depth="5">
    <FileSearch Name="Existing.dll"/>
  </DirectorySearch>
</Property>

DirectorySearch Reference: http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/manual/v3/xsd/wix/directorysearch.html FileSearch Reference: http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/manual/v3/xsd/wix/filesearch.html

This will put the full path to the file in the PROPFILESEARCHEXISTINGDLL property. From here you can then reference this property when placing the file on disk. (Assuming of course your have permissions to write to that location...)

Upvotes: 0

Christopher Painter
Christopher Painter

Reputation: 55601

I've only done this a little bit years ago. I'm 99% certain that the new.dll would be a companion file of the old.dll. In other words, the old.msi has a component with old.dll as the keyfile. The new.dll has to be added as an additional file to this component so that MsiPublishAssemblies / Fusion API can publish them together into the same storage directly.

You may be able to do this in a new.msi provided that you sync up the component ID (GUID) and mark it as a shared component. You would have to rebuild old.dll with the same strong name (and AssemblyVersion) but with a higher AssemblyFileVersion / Win32 File Version.

MSI component rules require newer DLL's to be backwards compatible. This goes double for the GAC. This seems to be a substantial change to old.dll. It might make sense to just rev the AssemblyVersion and define this as a whole new component and install side by side in the GAC.

Upvotes: 1

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