CODEWITHSUNDEEP
wixwindows-installer
techvd
techvd

Reputation: 11

How to access a temporary Exe or DLL from a DLL Custom action (C++ DLL) in MSI/WIX project?

I have two use cases: 1) loading a temporary DLL during a custom action and 2) executing a temporary EXE from a custom action. The custom action DLL is unmanaged C++. I cannot figure out how to get this working correctly. Including the DLL is easy enough but LoadLibrary is failing as it cannot find the DLL. I also cannot seem to get the physical path of the extracted DLL in order to specify full path in LoadLibrary. Any help is appreciated. I'm using WIX btw for this work.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1311

Answers (2)

imagi
imagi

Reputation: 986

One thing to remember - Windows Installer usually extracts files from Binary table to %TEMP%, however - the current work directory is often set to c:\windows\installer.

My suggestion - extract the temporary .dll from Binary table yourself when you need it. This gives you the control of when it's saved to. Just remember that you need write permission to the location, so usually some subdir of %temp% is the best choice.

Upvotes: 0

msiyer
msiyer

Reputation: 841

If you have included the dll and the exe in the Binary Table of the msi, the files will be physically present in the %Temp% folder of the currently logged in user which gets mapped to SUPPORTDIR property of Windows Installer.

You need to use MsiGetProperty to get the SUPPORTDIR and use that in the LoadLibrary.

Upvotes: 1

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