I have developed an Excel XLL using ExcelDNA and C#. I am at the point where I would like to begin testing the deployment, but cannot find much information that actually provides steps that work.
My project was developed as a Class library with ExcelDna references. In the .dna file, I have the code below that will pack all resources into a packed version of the XLL (i.e. the Pack="true" attribute).
<DnaLibrary Name="ExcelXLL" RuntimeVersion="v4.0" Language="C#">
<ExternalLibrary Path="ExcelXLL.dll" LoadFromBytes="false" Pack="true" />
I would like to deploy the packed XLL to the target machine in the path:
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\AddIns
In order to automatically register the XLL with Excel, I need to add a registry key that depends on the version of Excel that the user has.
For instance, on my computer (Windows 7 64 bit running Excel 2007 32-bit), I would need to add a registry key to the following path:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\Options\
The key would be type REG_SZ with the name OPEN (or OPEN1, OPEN2, etc.) and the value
/R "ExcelXLL-packed.xll"
I have 2 problems though. The first is in determining which version of Excel that the user has to get the correct path and the 2nd is to determine the correct OPEN version that I need to create (for example, if the user already has OPEN, OPEN1, and OPEN2 then I would create an OPEN3 key).
I am trying to do the installation using either the Setup and Deployment project or a InstallShield LE project and cannot determine how to go about this. Does anyone know how to do this or a better way of doing it?
EDIT 1:
I have done a great deal of research on this and have looked at several windows installers.
In the Package and Deployment and InstallShield LE, I can get the install/uninstall to work by putting an installer class into my class library and bundling project output with the install. In this approach, I handle inserting/removing the registry key using the installer class. The problem that I have is that the user must uninstall first before running a new install (no update capability).
I downloaded the Setup Factory demo version and can get install/update to work but cannot do the framework check (not shipped with the demo). Also, the uninstall fails (though I may be able to get this to work with some more investigation).
I am interested in using the WiX installer, but would like to know if anyone has a sample of how to perform the deployment using WiX. I would also like to know if I need to use the installer class or if there is a different way to handle the search for the OPEN[n] key under HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office[Version].0\Excel\Options. If I were to use the project output to enable the installer class, then I need to have 2 separate target directories (one under Program Files for the basic project output and one under %appdata%\Microsoft\AddIns for the packed XLL).
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Lee
To detect Excel 32-bit vs. 64-bit, you can check the registry: Detect whether Office is 32bit or 64bit via the registry
For the OPEN, OPEN1, OPEN2 etc. you typically need a Custom Action in the install script that enumerates the keys.
Using IsWix and Wix 3.7, I was able to resolve this.
Useful links for how to register the components are as follows:
For generating a C# class to handle Windows Installer Custom Actions:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/132918/Creating-Custom-Action-for-WIX-Written-in-Managed?fid=1599130&df=90&mpp=25&noise=3&prof=False&sort=Position&view=Quick&spc=Relaxed&select=4131367&fr=1#xx0xx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jschaffe/archive/2012/10/23/creating-wix-custom-actions-in-c-and-passing-parameters.aspx
For setting the property of the CustomAction.config file to Content
WIX Custom Actions built for .Net Framework 4.0 does not work? Ways to resolve?
EDIT 1:
For general knowledge on WiX (Very important)
http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/scobleizer/wix-team-the-most-used-piece-of-software-at-microsoft-and-its-open-source#Page=2
Related
Good day,
I have an application that I developed that transfers files between two machines ("site" and "server"). This application was set to target dotNet 3.5. Furthermore, I am using Renci.SshNet to handle the connections between the machines and the transferring of said files.
The issue that I am facing currently though is that about 70% of the "site" machines do not have a standard dotNet and is also quite old; thus these machines do not support all the required functionality as the external dll makes calls to System.Threading.WaitHandle.WaitOne() and System.Threading.WaitHandle.WaitAny(WaitHandle[], Int32) and other overloads of these methods.
The workaround that I have for this though is to install netfx20SP2 or netfx30SP1, yet I am not in the position to perform this update on all machines as they are scattered across the country and have data limitations (bandwidth and cap).
What I want to do possibly is to embed the System.Threading dll that I have downloaded and then the application should use those classes instead, or alternatively just point the application to use the said dll.
Is this at all possible, or do you have to load the dll into the GAC? And also, will it be possible to "run" this higher version of System.Threading in the application while the system itself is on a lower framework version. Something is telling me that the best bet will be to actually run the service pack installation to avoid unnecessary coding but I'm not sure exactly how to approach this.
Thank you in advance for any assistance / suggestions,
JD
To allow the execution of an application that, let's say, targets .Net 4; while the machine itself only has let's say, .Net 3.5, installed, one can redirect Windows to check the local (executing) directory for dlls that should contain the required symbols loaded into memory instead of the default symbols that get loaded upon execution (the default would be the NetFx installed on the machine - which I believe the highest version of the framework that can be found upon loading when the execution starts or would be the highest available version that is lower or equal to the targeted framework).
This file's contents (myApp.exe.local) are ignored. It is just there to tell Windows to
look in that folder for the applicable symbols and if not found, the system will roll back to attempt to load these symbols from the NetFx directory.
Read more at Microsoft Dev Center - Docs (link is attached to the following paragraph which is a Copy-Paste of a section of this document).
To use DLL redirection, create a redirection file for your application. The redirection file must be named as follows: App_name.local. For example, if the application name is Editor.exe, the redirection file should be named Editor.exe.local. You must install the .local file in the application directory. You must also install the DLLs in the application directory.
In one of the projects our team is working on, we are trying to make an automated deployment system for an existing desktop application. In order to do that we need to understand how InstallShield installs the application to begin with.
We have access to the InstallShield manifest, but there is an OCX file that we cannot figure out how to install manually (without InstallShield). This particular OCX file is set to 'Extract COM Information'.
Here's a screenshot:
The other OCXs in this application are self-registering, so they can be registered with Regsvr32.exe. But the OCX we are having problems with cannot be registered in that fashion.
How would one manually install an OCX file that is set to 'Extract COM Information' in an InstallShield manifest?
RegSvr32.exe calls the LoadLibrary API to load your DLL and then invokes the DllRegisterServer entry point inside your DLL. The code inside that function does the actual COM registration. If RegSvr32 is failing, that typically means a dependency of your DLL is missing or invalid.
InstallShield does all of this along with some really low level bit hacking to virtualize all of this and then harvest it. An old article on the subject is:
Spying on Registry Entries
InstallShield doesn't actually use this technique per say ( they have several techniques, most of which is not documented and various filters and transform engines to clean up the data ). If you are just looking for a way to do it without InstallShield, then look at Windows Installer XML's "Heat" command line tool. This can "harvest" COM metadata into WxS XML elements.
Also WiX is open source so if you are really curious you could go looking at their code.
As Christopher mentioned, InstallShield extracts COM information from your .ocx by seeing what it registers when invoked similarly to regsvr32.exe will invoke it. Its various forms of redirection (for capturing purposes) have the added benefit of working around several potential permissions problems while the file is registering in your build environment. However if I'm not missing the point of your question, it's "why doesn't regsvr32.exe your.ocx work on the target machine?"
This is a bit of a stab in the dark, as you haven't included enough information. While missing dependencies can cause this, I'm going to guess you only see this failure on Windows Vista/Server 2008 or higher. If this is the case, there's a good chance your application is trying to write to registry keys that are protected by Windows Resource Protection (WRP), or is being tripped up by a per-user typelib registration problem.
When a poorly behaved self-registration routine encounters WRP, it attempts to write to a registry key it lacks permission to modify, then fails the entire registration. I'm uncertain what happens to the keys it wrote before that point, but all ones after it definitely never make it to the machine. You should be able to confirm whether this is the case with a tool like Process Monitor.
What do you do if this is the case? Well, you can stick with an extraction approach like that of InstallShield (which you say you want to leave). You can fix the file to not attempt to write to protected keys (which you say you cannot modify). Or you might be able to use the Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) to shim things, but I don't see how you can generally do that downstream. Generally speaking, I would recommend fixing the file, or continuing to use a working approach.
I have three different MSI's created to deploy my project. My end result is to run a single exe that will call the rest three MSI's, with the current running installation description or name. As same as we see while Visual Studio Installation.
I have tried WIX but didn't come up with anything. Please guide.
Environment - Visual Studio 2008 / 2010 with Win 7
You're looking for a bootstrapper (sometimes called a chainer). There are many available, including open-source ones like DotNetInstaller and WiX's Burn.
You could create one MSI and combine all you project's primary outputs. If you need to separate them just add a folder for each project's primary outputs.
I wrote a plugin using FireBreath, VS2010, for Windows, all browsers.
In FireBreath documentation I saw that I have to install WiX. I installed it.
I created the project using the automatic fbgen tool so it autmatically created a WiX for me.
I couldn't understand from the doc is waht to do now:
Do I have to edit the generated WiX source file? If yes, what to change there?
What to write in the object tag that will trigger the installation of the msi created?
Or at least say to the user that installation is needed and link him to a download?
10x!
With the WiX Toolkit installed, re-run the prep__.bat file to regenerate the installer project along with the main plugin project. Build the plugin project, then build the installer project named something like {YourPlugin}_WiXInstaller. The msi will be placed in Firebreath's \build\bin\{YourPlugin}\{Configuration} dir ( {Configuration} is Debug, Release, etc).
It's not necessary to edit the WiX file unless you really want to change a specific setting. One thing I can think of is changing the default per-user install to all users. Per-user is usually better because it avoids UAC issues.
Deploying it to the user is a bit trickier. For most browsers, the user must save & run the msi. On IE you can declare an object in the HTML body and point the codebase to a URL containing the plugin:
<object id="pluginid" type="application/x-yourplugin" width="0" height="0" codebase="/YourPlugin.msi" >
<param name="onload" value="pluginLoaded" />
</object>
However IE9's security seems to block MSI's here. It does work if the plugin DLL is used (codebase="/YourPlugin.dll"). This auto-install method only works in IE with signed binaries (unless IE's security options are cranked way down).
Hopefully a discussion thread on the MSI security issue will yield some answers.
Update:
As hinted by Richard / taxilian, an MSI must be packaged within a CAB file in order for IE to install it. Getting the INF right and creating the CAB takes some additional steps as documented by RB. And to add yet another wrinkle, Vista/Win7 do not allow the INF to call any binary outside of the CAB file, so a stub launching app must be used (see this thread and example code posted by Roey towards the bottom).
Can any one tell me how to convert an legacy application which is vb6 ( COM dll's ocx and exes) to use Regfree COM .
I tried opening the dlls in visual studio and created manifest file, but some of the dlls it is giving error.
Is there any tools out there which will help me to do this process?
I tried a tool from codeproject which is called regsvr42, which is not creating the manifest fully.
I used tools like PE explorer where I get all the typelib information , but converting them into manifest files is too difficult.
We have started migrating that to .NET, for some months we have to deploy it, it will easier if it is xcopy based deployment.
To create manifest files you can try to use Make My Manifest from http://mmm4vb6.atom5.com/.
EDIT The MMM website is down. I see here that the author was having trouble with their hosting and has provided another location to get Make My Manifest - download it here.
If you can control creation of objects you can use DirectCOM from http://www.thecommon.net/10.html
Keep in mind that if one of used DLLs or OCXs is creating other COM objects dynamically with CreateObject calls, that reference will not be stored in vbp project file and you won't get full manifest file. Probably you will have to catch object creations while the application is running. Depends.exe application can profile running application and report all used dlls. I don't know if there is tool that can find additional COM related information.
There is an excellent walkthrough of what to do in this article on MSDN: Registration-Free Activation of COM Components: A Walkthrough.
Make My Manifest can accomodate late binding as well as early binding. You simply have to add the references to the late-bound dependencies manually, by file location or by ProgId.
You might look at http://mmm4vb6.atom5.com/mmm-demo-1248.html for additional help in using the utility.
MakeMyManifest is well spoken of as an automatic tool for creating manifests for VB6 projects, haven't tried it myself.
DirectCOM also has fans, again I haven't tried it.
EDIT The MMM website is down. I see here that the author was having trouble with their hosting and has provided another location to get Make My Manifest - download it here.
There is a semi-automatic technique. You can create the manifests with Visual Studio 2008 (you can use a free version like Visual Basic Express Edition). Then make a couple of edits by hand to make the manifests suitable for use from VB6. See this section of this MSDN article for step-by-step instructions - ignore the rest of the article which is about ClickOnce.