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authorRob Mensching <rob@firegiant.com>2021-05-11 07:36:37 -0700
committerRob Mensching <rob@firegiant.com>2021-05-11 07:36:37 -0700
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1<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
2<head>
3 <title>About InstallUtil</title>
4 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../styles/presentation.css" />
5 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="ms-help://Hx/HxRuntime/HxLink.css" />
6</head>
7
8<body>
9
10 <div id="control">
11 <span class="productTitle">Deployment Tools Foundation</span><br />
12 <span class="topicTitle">About InstallUtil</span><br />
13 <div id="toolbar">
14 <span id="chickenFeet">
15 <a href="using.htm">Development Guide</a> &gt;
16 <a href="managedcas.htm">Managed CAs</a> &gt;
17 <span class="nolink">InstallUtil</span>
18 </span>
19 </div>
20 </div>
21 <div id="main">
22 <div id="header">
23 </div>
24 <div class="summary">
25 <p>
26 InstallUtil is often considered as another option for executing MSI custom actions
27 written in managed code. But in most cases it is not the best solution, for a number
28 of reasons.</p>
29 <p>
30 InstallUtil (in either InstallUtil.exe or InstallUtilLib.dll form) is a .NET Framework
31 tool for executing the System.Configuration.Installer classes that are implemented
32 in an assembly. That way the assembly can contain any special code required to install
33 itself and uninstall itself. Essentially it is the .NET replacement for COM self-registration
34 aka DllRegisterServer.</p>
35 <p>
36 Self-reg or System.Configuration.Installer is convenient for development use in
37 order to test code without creating an actual setup package, or for an IDE which
38 wants to generate self-installing code. But experienced setup developers and the
39 <a href="MSI.chm::/setup/selfreg_table.htm">Windows Installer documentation</a>
40 all agree that self-reg is a bad practice for a
41 production-quality setup. The current theory of state-of-the-art setup is that it
42 should be as data-driven as possible. That is, the setup package describes as fully
43 as possible the desired state of the system, and then the installer engine calculates
44 the necessary actions to install, uninstall, patch, etc.</p>
45 <p>
46 S.C.I encourages developers to write code for things such as registering services
47 or registering COM classes or other things which are more appropriately done using
48 built-in MSI functionality (the ServiceInstall and Registry tables). The Visual
49 Studio .NET wizards also tend to generate this kind of install code. Again, that
50 is nice for development but not good for real installations. You end up with similar
51 but slightly different code in many places for doing the same thing. And that code
52 is a black-box to the installer engine.</p>
53 <p>
54 An ideal MSI custom action is a logical extension of the setup engine, meaning it
55 is data-driven and written in a very generic way to read from existing or custom
56 tables in the MSI database, following a very similar pattern to the built-in actions.
57 This makes the CA re-usable, and makes the installation more transparent. S.C.I
58 custom actions invoked by InstallUtil cannot be data-driven because they don't have
59 full access to the install session or database. They also cannot write to the install
60 session's regular MSI log, but instead use a separate log which is bad for supportability.</p>
61 <p>
62 InstallUtil also requires that the assembly be installed before the CA is able to
63 execute. This is a problem for CAs that need to execute during the UI phase, or
64 gather information before installation. For that purpose MSI allows custom action
65 binaries to be embedded as non-installed files, but InstallUtil cannot make use
66 of those.</p>
67 <p>
68 Custom actions developed with DTF have none of the limitations of InstallUtil,
69 giving a setup developer full capabilities to write well-designed custom actions,
70 only now in managed code.
71 </p>
72
73 <p>&nbsp;</p>
74 </div>
75
76 <div id="footer">
77 <p />
78 Send comments on this topic to <a id="HT_MailLink" href="mailto:wix-users%40lists.sourceforge.net?Subject=Deployment Tools Foundation Documentation">
79 wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net</a>
80
81 <script type="text/javascript">
82 var HT_mailLink = document.getElementById("HT_MailLink");
83 var HT_mailLinkText = HT_mailLink.innerHTML;
84 HT_mailLink.href += ": " + document.title;
85 HT_mailLink.innerHTML = HT_mailLinkText;
86 </script>
87
88 <p />
89
90 </div>
91 </div>
92
93</body>
94</html>
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