Hi Richard > Creating plain shortcuts is rather straightforward
It's not the shortcut @Target but the @Name I wanted to vary. >Shortcut [..] ICE There seems NOT to be any other solution than to use a dummy current user(!) registry entry according to various blog entries by the "gurus". I just want to have a non-advertised Shortcut to an exe that I install and one to another (third party) exe I found using FileSearch. Solution: http://robmensching.com/blog/archive/2007/04/27/How-to-create-an-uninstall-s hortcut-and-pass-all-the.aspx (the uninstaller example is obviously a bad thing to do, but the solution applies to my problem as well) If you know another solution (through WiX), glad to revise that. > You might as well criticize WiX because it doesn't solve world hunger. Like I said: "So dont't blame WiX, except maybe for not making the "thin wrapper catch" clear from the beginning." >My aversion to CA's is that for some reason people immediately rush to >create a CA when most of the time the standard actions already do what >they want. That's exactly how I felt at the beginning. I set goals very alike those of Chris in his second post. "zero CA's if possible". I can only laugh at that now. Just two examples Pop Quiz 1: You have a configuration file (.ini, XML, database, etc.). The user can change the preferences saved in it during normal use of the application (no elevated priviledges required). You would like to provide an initial setting with your installer. But of course the file should not be overwritten on [major] update or repair. Oulandish requirement? I don't think so. Possible with MSI? No! Pop Quiz 2: I want to read an .ini file entry from outside the Windows folder into a property. Why .ini and not Registry? In our case it's because the .ini may reside on a network server. Million other reasons thinkable. Outlandish requirement? I don't think so. Possible with MSI? No! Regarding self-made CAs: I'm a professional, university trained developer with lots of theoretical and practical background in multi-user concurrent transaction processing, serializability and all. I know all about the complexities of "commits and rollbacks". I know enough NOT to meddle with the transactional actions of the installer. My CAs are purely side effect free, except for setting properties. The real work is left to MSI. The CAs read some .ini files and mostly perform logic on properties that MSI can't. They set new properties to condition actions, components and dialogs. This is also the reason why I postponed the setup of non-static files (Pop Quiz 1) to the first application start, so I don't have to handle the rollback case. No really. Chris' initial statement really sums it up: "I can't believe how much making Windows Installer based installs sucks - I mean really sucks! Did we just invent this technology to make us hate our lives?" Cheers, Mark. -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Im Auftrag von Richard Gesendet: Dienstag, 13. Mai 2008 00:07 An: WiX Users Betreff: Re: [WiX-users] yep - back to being 100% frustrated In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Chris Mumford" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > So now I'm rewriting one of my installations (which has always had issues) > and I'm going to try to do it "right" with WiX. So I get it to install a few > files in the right folder, and my very next step is to create a simple > stupid shortcut - and it doesn't work with an ICE48 error. Searching around > didn't really turn up much, but there was a Google hit on Rob's site - which > was down - Grrrr. Creating plain shortcuts is rather straightforward, but for some reason its something that people seem to get hung up on relatively often. From the MSI documentation for the Shortcut table: "Target The shortcut target. [...] For a non-advertised shortcut, the installer evaluates this field as a Formatted string. The field should contains a property identifier enclosed by square brackets ([ ]), that is expanded into the file or a folder pointed to by the shortcut. For more information, see the CreateShortcuts action." If you're getting an ICE48 error ("ICE48 checks for directories that are hard-coded to local paths in the Property table."), then that doesn't have anything to do with shortcuts. In your Target column of your shortcut, you should be using the properties associated with directories as you've defined them in rows of the Directory table. If you're trying to create shortcuts to items in folders you didn't create, then use AppSearch to set the directory property. That WiX isn't an abstraction that raises you above having to understand the MSI table schema is a valid observation. I don't know if its a valid criticism of WiX as having an abstraction that raises you above the schema wasn't a design goal of WiX. You might as well criticize WiX because it doesn't solve world hunger. My aversion to CA's is that for some reason people immediately rush to create a CA when most of the time the standard actions already do what they want. Then there's the stupid VS.NET documentation that tells people to write CA's to get around the limitations of their authoring tool and not Windows Installer... Yet, CAs are there for a reason and sometimes you need them. But getting all the error handling working properly in a CA isn't easy and most of the bugs that I've fixed in complex installs revolved around CAs that failed in some peculiar way and didn't handle the failure properly. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. 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