Re: [WiX-users] Looking for Simple COM Component Install Info

[Orion E. <or...@co...>]

Someone's probably mentioned this but here's what happened to me.

User installs product, all is fine
User decided to 'uninstall' product manually, that is just delete all it'=
s
files. (The customer is always right you know).
User then tries to install later version of product which triggers upgrad=
e.
Upgrade calls RemoveExistingProducts which then goes and uninstalls old
version. Old version calls regsvr32 /u on a file which isn't there, unins=
tall
FAILS. upgrade FAILS. Cannot repair as they've lost the old install CD. M=
SIZap
is the only way to fix it.

Another problem is the sequencing of RemoveExistingProducts on major upgr=
ades.
Typically RemoveExistingProducts is done sometime after the new product h=
as
been installed. It's very easy to get the conditions wrong on your 'unreg=
ister'
CA, and hence have the user upgrade your product which causes your COM ob=
jects
to no longer be registered... neat aye.

Oh, and what happens when you call regsvr on a file and you're not an
administrative user? The answer is that it fails and you lose. If you han=
dle
the registry entries yourself then MSI will put then in HKCU and have the=
 COM
object registered per-user (regsvr can't do this no matter how much you w=
ant it
to)

While self register does work and in itself is fine, basically you're ope=
ning
yourself up to literally hundreds of other follow-on-effect type bugs whi=
ch can
all be easily avoided you just use RegCap and write some registry entries=
 :P

If you do pay any attention to this, remember to use RegCap /I otherwise =
you'll
have fun as it doesn't catch COM Interfaces by default, but basically the=
 gist
of what you're doing is shifting your COM registration failure point from
user-install time to your-build time, which is much much much MUCH better
practice.

Quoting Roel Vanhout <ro...@ri...>:

> Subbu Balakrishnan wrote:
> > COM self-registration in MSIs is evil!=20
>=20
> This has probably been discussed before, so sorry if I ask a stupid=20
> question, but why is that?
>=20
>=20
> cheers,
>=20
> roel
>=20
>=20
>=20
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>=20