CODEWITHSUNDEEP
wixwindows-installer
ForceAttack
ForceAttack

Reputation: 11

Wix msi package deleting all the files during majorupgrade

I am new to wix, previously, I was trying to solve the problem that major upgrade updated all the config files. I manage to fix it by schdule the RemoveExistingProduct after the installExecute. However, it brings me a new problem, major upgrade between the package I generated using current project is fine, but there is a old msi package (have same upgrade code), when I major upgrade with that old package installed, it delete everything, files can only reappear after I repair. In the log it has

1: msvcp140_2.dll 2:  3:  4:  5:  6:  7:  8:  9: C:\Folders\ 
MSI (s) (5C:04) [18:29:11:453]: Verifying accessibility of file: msvcp140_2.dll
MSI (s) (5C:04) [18:29:11:453]: Note: 1: 2318 2:  
MSI (s) (5C:04) [18:29:11:453]: Note: 1: 2318 2:  
MSI (s) (5C:04) [18:29:11:454]: Executing op: FileRemove(,FileName=msvcp140_codecvt_ids.dll,,)

Any help would be appreciated!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 385

Answers (1)

Christopher Painter
Christopher Painter

Reputation: 55601

The best advice I can give you is MSI wants to own the files it installs and ignores the files it doesn't.

So if MSI installs a file v1 and a user modifies it, then when a later MSI installs the file v2 it's going to be wrong if it overwrites it or doesn't overwrite it.

You can write custom actions to harvest user data from the file and reapply them after MSI overwrites the file but this gets tedious.

My general reccomendation is to design the app to have two config files.

app.config ( installed by MSI and user does not modify ) app-override.config ( not installed by MSI and user data is stored here )

The application then reads and merges the two files in memory. In this way MSI can safely always overwrite the file without any harm and the user data isn't lost and the new data from v2 isn't lost.

In this way it's all really simple and easy and you can set your RemoveExistingProducts scheduling back to where it was in the first place.

If this was a .NET app, .NET ConfigurationManager classes already support this pattern out of the box. The AppSettings element has a File attribute that can point to a second file to merge in.

Upvotes: 0

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