Re: GSoC project about binary packaging

[Anirudha Bose]

On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 9:31 PM, Patrick Noffke <address@hidden> wrote:

On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 10:20 AM, Patrick Noffke
<address@hidden> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 9:55 AM, Anirudha Bose <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Hi Patrick. I have spent some time studying the file you have attached. I
>> suppose you are using WiX v3.7. It seems the property LongName has been
>> deprecated in the version I am using (v4.0). Moreover I saw a few syntax
>> errors in your file which I have fixed now. It would be great if you clear
>> some of my questions (I realize that the learning curve of WiX is steep).
>
> Sorry, that was based on a very old example I did.  Could you please
> send the fixed version, or a diff against mxe-octave (whatever is
> easier at this point)?
>

Attached is a version that works with wixl (msi-tools) on Fedora 18.
It builds a .msi file that installs on XP.

I just hard-coded what I though was the path to the octave.exe file to
use.  This path (based on the build date) should probably be replaced
with a variable that is processed by sed as part of the build.

I added to the translations component all the files in the
dist/octave-2013-07-02-14-37/translations directory.  This would
probably be easier to script with wixl-heat as I showed in an earlier
email.

Patrick

I am sending you my new wxs file [1] based on the file you have attached. I believe it solves a handful of problems. They are as follows:

1. Changed the schema to use a newer version:

    <Wix xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/wi">

2. Separated the Shortcut tag from the File tag. This is known to cause some errors, namely ICE57 and ICE43. I also added a registry key for each shortcut tag.

3. Grouped each shortcut inside a separate component.

What I would like this installer to do is let the user choose their own installation path. In my Windows 8 machine, the MSI file is directly installed without any confirmation or showing customizing options. How do we do that in WiX?

[1] https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0ByU28MYPGBpoNXJlTVhGaEdYNnc

- Ani