11 replies to this topic

[felltier-a]

Hi @ll,

i dont know if this is a problem by the installer or my project, so i´m posting into this section. Please move if it´s wrong.

I created a new Feature and was changing some descriptions of other features. Now i want to patch these changes. The patch runs without errors but whether the language MST of the standard language nor for the other languages becomes changed. The MSI-File is updated correctly and contains the information about the new feature and the changed descriptions but the MST is not the new one

Am i missing something? Has anybody an idea what is going wrong?


regards,
Udo

[Stefan Krueger]

As far as I know you can't change a transform (mst) using a patch.

[felltier-a]

Hi Stefan,

Ok, but how can i make changes to feature descriptions or names during a patch? Is this generelly not possible or is there another way?

regards,
Udo

[Stefan Krueger]

I think this is not possible in a multi-language setup, only in a single-language setup (whcih doesn't use language transforms)

[vishnub]

Hi Stefan,
I too face one such issue. We delivered our product as .msi with 2 .mst's (1033 - English & 1041 - Japanese) and used our own wrapper in C++ to invoke the msi with corresponding mst applied as command line based on the OS language.

Now when I have to provide a patch (.msp) for the released product, I generate a .msi & 2 .mst's, but we compare only the old & new msi's to generate patch.
When I run the patch (.msp), Update button in the Patch Welcome panel has some junk characters for Japanese, I correct this in the string table, but it was not reflecting in the msp for above reason.


Since this is the 1st dialog in the patch and with junk characters on the button, it looks awkward. Please suggest how to fix this issue.

Thanks in advance,
Vishnu

[Stefan Krueger]

I think you would need to perform a major upgrade (full uninstall of the old version) as a workaround.

[Glytzhkof]

Here is something you can try:

1: Take the original MSI, apply each transform and save a copy of the transformed version of the MSI. In your case you should end up with 2 MSIs - one for English one for Japanese.

2: Take the new MSI. Do the same as above: apply each transform and save a copy of the transformed version of the MSI.

3: You should now have 4 MSI files. 2 English MSIs and 2 Japanese MSIs. The old and the new version for each language.

4: Now use the 2 MSIs for each language to generate 2 separate patch files.

5: Install the original version of the software in the language of your choice. Next launch the patch created for the installed language version.

There is more to this than what is described above. In most cases I would change the product code for each of these releases, and install them to different folders to be able to patch them separately like this, but I think it might work even if you deliver both language versions as the same product.

[vishnub]

Thanks Stefan & Glytzhkof,
Both of your suggestion will work, but I hope the effort was considerably more.

Is it possible to apply transform during patch. I corrected the string and generated msi & 2 msts. Generated msp by diffing the msis and can i apply transform while running the msp.

I tried as follows, but it didn't work
msiexec /p "C:\fix.msp" TRANSFORMS="C:\fix_1041.mst"

Please let me know whether it will be possible.

Thanks,
Vishnu

[VBScab]

[vishnub]

Thanks for confirmation VBScab,
I tried the option suggested by Glytzhkof as follows

- Generated 2 MSIs for released product by applying transforms (ENG & JPN) using MSITran.exe from Platform SDK.
- Generated 2 MSIs for new version of the product.
- Generated 2 MSP for each language.
- If I opened the old Japanese (MST applied MSI) Orca to view the Dialog through Tools -> Dialog Preview option, I see the junk character
- I applied the Japanese MSP generated and viewed the Dialog through Dialog Preview of Orca, the changes are reflected.

But when I run the MSP on the machine using msiexec /p option, the string in the dialog still displays junk character.
The only difference I see between my testing above & on the machine having product installed is
- On testing, I apply MSP on MSI (MST applied), since both MST & MSP cannot be applied same time with Orca.
- On installed machine, Windows Installer will do the MST applied over the MSI in the cache

What went wrong here, how can I fix this problem. Any help will be highly appreciated.

Thanks,
Vishnu

[Glytzhkof]

Are you testing the Japanese setup on a Japanese machine?

[vishnub]

Hi Stein,
Yes, I am trying patch installation on a Japanese locale machine.
With Orca on English or Japanese locale machines, I am getting the dialog string changes reflected perfectly.

Thanks,
Vishnu