3 replies to this topic

[Bob Costello]

I made two posts last week to another users group regarding minor upgrades problems I have been having (new files not being installed). I think I solved my problem so I thought I would pass my results along.

With IS X, here is what I tried to do. In the Upgrades view, add a minor upgrade item. Then, in the Setup to Upgrade box, I browsed to my current build area(Disk1). When I rebuilt, I found that I had to copy my previous build area to a separate directory, probably because of permission problems. When I rebuilt again, I got a series of messages saying components in the previous build were missing from the upgrade build. These missing components were resolved dynamically, that is at build time. The component GUID's for these dynamic components are set at build time and they vary from build to build. So when I made an upgrade build, a dynamically resolved component could not find its counterpart in the original build. These dynamic components are what generated the error messages.

I thus had to explicitly add each dynamic component to my build. The problem was, it was not apparent to me how to get the file names for these dynamic component GUIDs. I tried the IS Direct Editor but couldn't spot the file names for these dynamic components in either the file or component tables. So, I downloaded the Windows Installer SDK and found an exe named orca that is an MSI editor/browser. When I opened my .msi file with orca, I was able to spot
the file names for the dynamic components. These dynamic components are easy to spot. The component name is basically a GUID. When I explicitly added all the files, I was able to create(and install) the upgrade build.

[Stefan Krueger]

Did you specify the previous MSI file in the Patch Optimization field of the release wizard?

[Bob Costello]

I didn't make a patch or use the release wizard. I wanted the CD(build) to be able to either make a new install or update an existing install. I put the path to my existing(previous) install in Upgrades View->(Minor/Small)Upgrade Item-> Setup To Upgrade(text box)

[Stefan Krueger]

If you use dynamic links you still should populate this entry (despite its name)