3 replies to this topic

[dkingston]

I have a CA that inserts temporary records in the Registry table. When I run the package in debug mode, the registry keys are inserted correctly.  When I compile the release, nothing.  The install log shows the install package installed keys that were added at design time, but not the programatically inserted ones.

So it works great in debug, but not once compiled.

[pdriley]

I had a very bizarre bug compiling CAs into an MSI DLL using VC++.  Basically, it always worked in debug mode and never when compiled for release.  It turned out that all I had to do was compile it without any optimisation.

Menu: Project->Settings

make sure Win32 Release mode is selected on the left-hand side

in the C++ Tab, select the General options and change "Optimizations" to "Disable (Debug)"

then try again.  Bizarre but true, it worked for me, I hope it will for you (it doesn't add a whole lot to the DLL speed / size).

[dkingston]

Turns out the issue was that temporary records inserted into the Installer database during the UI sequence are not persisted.  So any temporary records entered during the UI sequence are not available in the Execute sequence.

Which led to my next discovery: in order to have properties persist from the UI sequence to the Execute sequence, the properties must be specified as globabl properties by having their names in all capital letters.

So, the end result was that I had to save the information I had gathered during the UI sequence into global properties, then read it back out during the Execute sequence.  At that point I could write the temporary records into the Registry table so that the Installer would write the new keys to the registry for me.