Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products
February 19, 2008Feb 19, 200802/19/08Yesterday I described an issue when adding new components to existing, not-installed (absent) features the feature tree is installed. This can lead to prompts for source or failed installations.
One workaround is to add new, top-level hidden features. This works well unless new resources have a dependency on the older resources installed by the would-be feature tree –
February 18, 2008Feb 18, 200802/18/08As Developer Division starts to ship patches for the Visual Studio 2008, some users are being prompted for installation source media. This is a resulting of Windows Installer needing the original source files if, for example, files are missing from disk when you repair your product or backup files are not available during patch install.
February 12, 2008Feb 12, 200802/12/08Debugging custom actions isn’t exactly the easiest action to do; Windows Installer spawns separate processes – remoting servers – to run in-process custom actions. Any opportunity to diagnose issues without debugging can be helpful.
For example, an issue that comes up from time to time is leaked handles.
February 8, 2008Feb 8, 200802/8/08Binder variables in WiX are variables that are resolved, coincidentally, at bind time. This is when the linker, light.exe, collects file information, assigns auto-GUIDs, and generates the output packages among other things. There are binder variables for all versioned binaries, and binder variables specific to both managed and native assemblies or exclusive to one or the other.
