I have built Visual Studio Setup Project, and it contains some Merge Modules etc, now sometimes all dll files included in the project are not showing up as latest version.
After every build, I have to install every setup (5 of them) to check all dlls contain latest version files only.
Is there any API where I can analyze the content of MSI file and verify my dlls have correct version without doing install/uninstall?
Any COM interface will be helpful provided I can program some quick version check on c#.
See the Windows Installer Automation Interface - that should give you what you need.
Also, there are tools out there like Orca or LessMSI, which allow you to peek inside the generated MSI files interactively.
Related
I have a windows form c-sharp application developed for windows 10. When I am trying to make installer, I cannot find "microsoft database engine 2010" (important for my app) under the "prerequisite" as shown below:
I do not want my customer to separately download it and install it. So is there a way I can generate an installer that will install complete software along with microsoft database engine 2010 ( if it is not already installed on the system) ?
I have never used this runtime, but did you do a Google search? It looks like the runtime is available: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=13255. I am sure you did. Perhaps it is the wrong one? Or a format you can't use I guess.
The downloads are x86 and 64-bit versions in EXE format. The EXE files have embedded MSI files (Windows Installer) that you can extract, or you should be able to just run the EXE in silent mode (probably safest). Do a AccessDatabaseEngine_X64.exe /? to get a list of parameters.
Merge Modules
Normally you can use a merge module to add a runtime component to your own MSI at compile time, but this runtime may not be available in this format. Instead you can use a bootstrapper of some kind to run your own MSI installer and this prerequisite database engine runtime MSI / EXE in sequence (or even just a batch file - see towards the bottom).
Bootstrappers
The WiX toolkit (which is a better way to make MSI files than Visual Studio Installer Projects - see the link for some details) features a bootstrapper called Burn - it can install both EXE and MSI files in sequence. There are also other bootstrappers available, but I haven't tried them. Here is a description of some bootstrappers from earlier: Wix - How to run/install application without UI.
As you will see in the link immediately above, there is a sample of the WiX bootstrapper Burn in use here: https://github.com/frederiksen/Classic-WiX-Burn-Theme (it even shows a WiX MSI package as well). WiX and Burn does have a learning curve.
There may be simpler options available using Visual Studio Installer Projects that I am not aware of, but I think you need a bootstrapper to install several MSI files in sequence. As far as I can see these Installer Projects support only the listed prerequisites that you show in your screenshot to download and install on demand, and they seem to allow the addition of (any) standard merge module. It is very strange that you can't tell the Installer Project's setup.exe to kick off the install of any MSI as a prerequisite considering that the whole feature is made to install prerequisites in the first place. PhilDW will surely be able to tell you with certainty.
Commercial tools such as Advanced Installer or Installshield also have features to allow you to bundle setups, in various formats, together for installation in sequence. It might be a feature in the Premium or most expensive edition in Installshield's case. Not sure for Advanced Installer. Bogdan Mitrache will be able to tell us - they may do it better. I don't want to claim something I am not sure of - things like these change as new versions are released (may obviously also be the case for Installshield).
Batch File, PowerShell Script
In closing I should add that you can obviously use a batch file to install files in sequence (or a PowerShell script - which would depend on .NET though). For example wrapped in a self-extracting archive. You can quickly try the built in iexpress.exe self-extracting tool in Windows: Hold down Windows Key and tap R, enter iexpress and press Enter. Click through the options. Be very aware of the security vulnerabilities iexpress suffers from!
Not sure how well well these wrappers clean up their temporary files (particularly if there are errors during installation) - which could be ugly and annoying, but it should work. A bootstrapper can do a lot more though - such as provide a real GUI for your users and handle error conditions among other things.
Security problems with deployment solutions is a pet peeve of mine, so I want to add a link to this: Prevent DLL Hijacking Burn with Clean Room. A WiX Burn issue fixed in the latest version of WiX (as of Jan.2018). As you can see, the allure and simplicity of iexpress.exe generally does not make up for its security shortcomings. It is most definitely not good enough for a world-wide, large-scale, public release.
Should you want to use a batch file or PowerShell for the installation, then the following answer provides some information on using the msiexec.exe command line, and there is also a link to another answer which deals with PowerShell installation: How can I use powershell to run through an installer?
There is a built event known as BeforeInstall now this event is not firing correctly, it fires when the msi install wizard has begun install and by then it is too late for my pre-requisites to be installed, how do you go about changing the behavior of a built in event or shall i implement my own event with an handler?
It's very badly named. It is not before the install. Everything supplied by Visual Studio where you can run your code is actually run after all the files are installed. That's why you need a prerequisite handler, which is what Visual Studio setups provide with a standard list of prerequisites.
Although the Bootstrap Manifest Generator may still work it's better IMO to use the WiX bootstrapper. Note that you don't need to build your MSI file with WiX but you can use the bootstrapper bundle. Here are some examples and documentation:
http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/manual/v3/bundle/
https://www.firegiant.com/wix/tutorial/net-and-net/bootstrapping/
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/cb88b2/installing-prerequisites-using-wix-bootstrapper-project-and/
Regarding the later comment about this being related to providing a prerequisite Dll, the simple solution is to add it to your setup project as a file and simply install it in the required folder. All install custom actions in VS setups run after the files are installed. You may be using some "project output" setting as input to your MSI build, but you can just add the Dll as a single file. Some Dlls have redistributable packages (merge modules or executables) to ensure correct installation - if yours is one of those this is the correct way to do it.
I have wrote a program HelloApp with Matlab and packaged it as .NET Assembly using deploytool as described here. As a result I have got helloapp.dll library, which I included into my Visual Studio 2015 as a reference, so I can run Matlab methods directly from C#. To run the code without Matlab installed, the end user needs Matlab Runtime (MCR) installed at least.
Now I want to create an installer for my C# program. I have came across Visual Studio 2015 Installer Projects which provides some tools to create program setup wizard. The problem is, I don't know how to include download and setup of MCR package as a step in installation process to ensure the user has all the required prerequisites in order for program to run.
Well this is not really an answer, but comment area in question was too short ...
I don't know much about VS2015 Installer as I personnally use innosetup. Anyway to check if runtime is installed on target machine you can look if following key exists in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MathWorks\MATLAB Runtime\9.0
See my posts here and here for further details.
NB1: Note that installer for Matlab runtime is very large (about 1 GB). I would not package it with application to deploy, but just warn the user to install it separately.
NB2: I think Mathworks is packaging C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2015b\toolbox\compiler\deploy\win64\InstallAgent.zip (~66MB) rather than MCRInstall.exe (~1GB) when deploying standalone installer with deploytool for downloading the runtime during install but I don't know how it works.
I am making an installer using NSIS and my gameplan was to
Build the startup project
Copy the Files created from the bin/(x86) or bin/x64 folder and embed them in the installer
The problem is that some files do not get included. From what I have seen, these files are exclusively Microsoft dlls. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can include them?
My idea is to parse through the csProj file and loop through every file on the Item-Group -> PublishFile node, check if it is in the bin subfolder, if it is not,embed the file in the installer.
Is there a simpler/better way to do this? If not, is there atleast a class(perhaps a DTE class) that represents the contents of the csProj file so I wouldn't need to parse xml? I have looked around and I couldn't find any.
From your original post what I can understand is that, you are building some sort of C# application and want to build a installer for the same.
Now why do you need to pack Microsoft Dlls?
Microsoft do provide every redistributable packages to be installed on end-user computer. You need to analyze what are the packages you need when running your application on a computer that doesn't have Visual Studio installed.
I think you only need .Net Framework and SQL redist packages. And these things can be installed silent during installation. And this is the proer approach.
I have this problem. I want to build an installer for my c# solution, that will be placed in a folder with other installation folders and files that are needed to be copied to the installed folder. So that is easy, I just copy them to the folder I create using the folder structure I want.
Now, I want also to install another program and run a .exe file I've created to unzip some files for me. For that I need to copy 2 .exe files and 2 dlls (for the exes) to the folder to which I am installing and create 2 custom actions that will use them. That I've managed to do.
After that I want to delete those 4 extra files, as the user does not need them and shouldn't even be aware they are there. How to do so? I couldn't find a way in the built in setup project preferences + I do not know how to make a custom installer class.
A bonus question, is how to make the other installer (one of the .exe files is just a plain installer) install quietly to any path? I do not want the user to see an installer pop out of my program installer.
Thanks!
Some commercial setup authoring tools support temporary files. They are extracted when the installation starts and automatically removed when the installation ends. They are never registered with Windows Installer.
You can find a list of setup tools here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_installation_software
Regarding the prerequisite, it depends on its setup package. You can install it silently only if it supports this through its command line.
Don't. You will get a ton of problems with Windows Installer trying to automatically repair your applications and such things. You might be able to solve the problem with a more advanced installer creator, such as WiX.