Customize WixUI_Minimal on WiX 3.11 / Visual Studio 2017 - visual-studio-2017

I'm trying to customzie the WixUI_Minimal dialog set on WiX 3.11, using Visual Studio.
Following the manual here does not work anymore as it reports of a lot of duplicate symbols. For example:
Duplicate symbol 'ControlEvent:VerifyReadyDlg/Back/NewDialog/WelcomeDlg/Installed AND PATCH' found. This typically means that an Id is duplicated. Check to make sure all your identifiers of a given type (File, Component, Feature) are unique
(This stack overflow question ran into the same issue)
Trying the solutions in this question did not help either as it was coming up with various error codes (different than those mentioned in the question).
This question and this one didn't help either.
It seems something broke in Wix 3.11 / Visual Studio 2017. Has anyone managed to understand how to fix it? Am kind of fearing WiX is losing it's support from its authors...

I'm not sure why you think WiX is losing support. Plenty of free support is provided here and on the wix-users mailing list. They also offer paid support options with SLAs and fixes. Other consultants such as myself provide free support and paid support also.
The WiXUI is a simple to use canned set of UI with limited override/transformation capabilities. You can do things like insert a dialog into a wizard loop sequence but doing so requires that you understand how the rows in the ControlEvent table area evaluated.
You can get an example here:
https://github.com/iswix-llc/iswix/blob/master/Application/IsWiXNewAddIn/MSISolutionTemplate/SetupProjectTemplate/UI.wxs
My uncommenting line 10 it causes it to consume this fragment:
https://github.com/iswix-llc/iswix/blob/master/Application/IsWiXNewAddIn/MSISolutionTemplate/SetupProjectTemplate/UI-CustomDialog.wxs
Lines 33-34 insert rows into the ControlEvent table that take priority over existing rows based on:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/msi/controlevent-table
If this is too limiting for your needs, you can intead not use the UI extension and simply take a copy of all of it's files from here and do anything you want with them:
https://github.com/wixtoolset/wix3/tree/develop/src/ext/UIExtension/wixlib
Finally if that doesn't meet your needs you can always create a custom bootstrapper application for Burn and use WPF/MVVM to do anything you could possibly want.
FWIW, I've been writing installers for 23 years and using MSI for 16 years. I'm the author for the FOSS project IsWiX which provides templates and designers to simplify automate most of this work. You can get an idea of how IsWiX works here:
https://github.com/iswix-llc/iswix-tutorials
1 hour free consultations are available for interested parties. Just shoot me an email or send me a LinkedIn invite.

Related

How to ignore django expression errors in VS Code js file?

Is there any way to ignore these kind of errors (django expressions)? The code works perfectly, but VS Code is triggering those errors, which I find visually distracting.
You just need to install an extension that provides language support for Django templates. Go search for one that works for you on the Visual Studio Marketplace or in the extensions view of VS Code.
I'd list some extensions on the marketplace, but in the interest of being non-biased and not having to come and maintain a list when new ones come out in the future, I won't. (There's also the fact that Stack Overflow is not a platform for software recommendations (see #3 of /help/on-topic)).
Now, if you really just want to disable problem highlighting, see How can I easily toggle display of problem underlining in VS Code editor panels?

How to prevent Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 to add telemetry_main_invoke_trigger?

A simple C++ console app
int main()
{
return 0;
}
compiled in Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 adds a call to telemetry_main_invoke_trigger to both Debug and Release binaries.
How can I prevent this?
According to Microsoft’s Steve Carroll (Development Manager for the Visual C++ team), you can remove telemetry calls by adding notelemetry.obj to the command options of the linker:
Steve Carroll explained that this will be removed in the upcoming Update 3:
Our intent was benign – our desire was to build a framework that will
help investigate performance problems and improve the quality of our
optimizer should we get any reports of slowdowns or endemic perf
problems in the field. We apologize for raising the suspicion levels
even further by not including the CRT source, this was just an
oversight on our part. Despite that, some of you already investigated
how this mechanism works in nice detail. As you have already called
out, what the code does is trigger an ETW event which, when it’s
turned on, will emit timestamps and module loads events. The event
data can only be interpreted if a customer gives us symbol information
(i.e. PDBs) so this data is only applicable to customers that are
actively seeking help from us and are willing to share these PDBs as
part of their investigation. We haven’t actually gone through this
full exercise with any customers to date though, and we are so far
relying on our established approaches to investigate and address
potential problems instead. We plan to remove these events in Update
3. In the meantime, to remove this dependency in Update 2, you should add notelemetry.obj to your linker command line.

Using Databases in C++ and Visual Studio 6

I already did some searching on stackoverflow and as far as I can see there are many ways to use databases in C++. Unfortunately at work my tools are pretty limited. I only get to use visual studio C++ 6 and don't even have boost (although I have learned to cope with that) - I assume that I can only use what is the standard distribution being delivered togather with VS C++ 6.
Now my code generates a lot of data and I would like to store some of it in a simple databse (like an MS Access db). What tools might I be able to use?
My alternative approauch would be to create a database-like object via a struct and vectors/arrays.
I also have office 2010 installed - perhaps I could somehow use Access?
Computation-speed also plays a role - the faster the better.
Another important thing: my PC at work isn't an open client. Thus I can not install any new software. Downloading and moving files works. Basically I must be able to install the tool by just moving the files into a desired folder.
Please let me know if the question is confusing or insufficiently detailed I will do what i can to remedy the situation then.
Thnaks in advance for your help :)
Even though you said 'only standard tools', I'd still say, get SQLite. It ss a public domain software, i.e. no license whatsoever . You can download an 'amalgamation' - one .h file and one .c file and include it into your project. It should compile in VC6 no problem. Very easy to use, you will be up and running in 10 minutes.
It does exactly what you need - a DB in a single file, no servers, zero-setup, etc.
Well, Visual C++ 6 did include MFC which had a suite of classes for the creation and manipulation of databases, I'm fairly certain it would be possible to use these to create a database that is accessible from Access. Unfortunately Microsoft's online help doesn't seem to go back that far, but all the reference material you need should come with the VS 6. (In my opinion VS Help system was better back then anyways.)
On a side note, you could download an old version of boost that would work with VS6. I'm not sure what the last version of boost that supports VS6 is, my guess it's somewhere around 1.3x.
VC6 should work.
Can you use MFC's db objects? (DAO I think back then?).
If your app really generates a lot of data, you might want to look at MySql. I've run into size limitations in older Access tables. Unless it's an extraordinarily simple db, you probably don't want to brew your own (though it might be fun if you have a lot of time).
The key will be finding a driver/db combo that will work. I would install the GA (free) MySql, create a tiny db with 1 table and find the driver ("connector" in MySql terms) that will work. Maybe older ODBC driver?
Also, check out ConnectionStrings.com for info on getting connected to a particular database / driver.

Is Embarcadero C++ Builder a good choice as an IDE? [closed]

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As we are (me and people I work with) more and more frustrated while working with C++ projects 250 000+ LOC in VS2010 sp1 (the slowness of this IDE is just unbelievable), in my company we were talking about migrating our code to some different IDE. We did some research, and a strong candidate seems to be Embarcadero C++ builder 2011 XE. Any thoughts on it? Is it any good? How does it compares to VS2010 ultimate?
I've been using C++ Builder since 1.0 and I hate it with a passion. You would think after all these years, simple little annoyances would be fixed by now but they are not. Here is a list of issues I have with C++ Builder IDE.
Your layout or personality never is maintained. You create one, save it and it only applies to certain things. For example the debugger window will not maintain its position nor will the message window. If you detach the project explorer it will sometimes dissappear. Most of the time reloading your personality doesn't fix this either. You are stuck dragging your windows back into place.
The debugger will sometimes work and sometimes not work. In a debug build if you set a break point and begin stepping through code, you can hover over a variable to inspect it. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't work on the exact same variable. Crazy!
Eclipse looks for code mistakes like if you forget to put a semi-colon at the end of your statement, it puts a little ? mark in the margin. C++ Builder doesn't do anything like this. It gives you a cryptic compile time error message.
Recent versions of C++ Builder use a makefile similar to VS; it's an XML mess. Eclipse works with CMake and Makefiles. I've read in places that the CMake maintainers are looking for a C++Builder generator but last I checked this doesn't exist. I do embedded and cross compiling so sometimes my C++ Builder code is copied to my embedded development environment or shared with it and I wind up maintaining two build environments.
Not really an IDE but C++Builder does not take advantage of multiple CPUs to compile code. There is, however, a 3rd party tool you can spend more money on to get this. It's called TwineCompile (http://www.jomitech.com/twine.php). With Eclipse, they call out to whatever compiler you're using (gcc, etc...) and those compilers and make support -j option.
C++Builder comes with a limited version of AQTime which is a dynamic code profiler. Spend more and you get the more advanced version. Eclipse supports many dynamic and static code analysis (which also cost $$) but at least the plugins are there. We use Klockworx.
C++ Builder has no support, that I'm aware of, for external source control like GIT. Eclipse does. C++ Builder comes with subversion, I think, built-in. If it supports GIT, I could never get it to work. It tells me it doesn't understand the URL scheme when I give it a git path.
Certain template code I write causes the compiler to segfault and have to completely restart the IDE. This is nuts to me. You have a compiler that is 10+ years old and it's still segfaulting. I have a piece of C++ template code that when I take it to my work computer running exact same version of C++ Builder, it compiles OK, but on my home machine it segfaults. I'm absolutely sure there are no adverse factors at play like viruses, etc...
While compiling a large project that may take a long time, you are unable to browse code with the IDE. Sometimes you may see a compiler warning scroll by and you have to either wait for the compile job to complete to inspect the mentioned line or use an alternate means to open the file.
C++ Builder IDE has a concept of a Project Group with sub projects that are more/less self contained. The Project Group has no concept of a project group include/link path like the sub-projects have. Sub-projects have a base, debug, release paths where debug and release can inherit or block from the base but you don't have this at the project group level. The IDE has global settings which can be inherited but it's for everything you do in the IDE. So there is no way to modify for a given project group, just the include/linker paths for a set of sub-projects. I just think they could have done a better job with this.
C++ Builder's Build output is not color coded to, for example, show errors in red and warnings in some other color. Everything is black and white. VC and Eclipse color code and give option to change colors for various warnings and errors. The output tab in C++ Builder is same way. On big projects, it's very difficult to investigate compiler warnings with the other noise. In C++ Builder's IDE you can select level of warnings but this only affects output in the Output tab and you still get other stupid noise like letting me know its deleting linker state files "CleanLinkerStateFiles."
Unless you're doing Windows desktop GUI development, stay away from Embarcadero/C++ Builder. I started using C++ Builder version 1 back in the Borland days and have a few large projects that are heavily invested in the VCL so I'm stuck with it for those projects but all my new projects, I've been using Eclipse.
On a positive note about C++ Builder, the VCL is quite nice. It's not multi-threaded but it's nice for creating a desktop GUI app really quick. I think it's much faster to get a C++ based GUI app up in CBuilder than it is in VS. And there appears to be a ton of free and paid GUI components for CBuilder; again with a C++ focus. I know C# + VS has a wealth of GUI controls.
UPDATE:
I just ran into a problem today that is same as the one mentioned in this forum:
http://qc.embarcadero.com/wc/qcmain.aspx?d=57631
[ILINK32 Warning] Warning: Error detected (ILI4536)
Make up your mind. Is it a warning or a god dam error?
Scroll all the way to the end where you find individuals modifying ILINK32.EXE to get it working again. As of this morning, our builds stop working. We're dead in the water as we scramble to understand and find out what to do about this.
Is this the kind of compiler/IDE you want to depend on? Again, this product has been around for more than a decade and it still has issues like this. I find this completely unacceptable. Crap product from a company that doesn't give a shit.
Not actually an answer, but I'll just leave it here:
It costs money (yes, VS too, but you already own that, don't you?)
It will be not too easy to migrate a big enough project to new IDE (and compiler), not to say about the people you work with and their habits (I would just quit probably).
There's a new compiler too, with its brand bugs and caveats to learn about. And it's much less widely used than VC++. However, it's based on Clang, which should support standards better than VC++, and be easier to port existing C++ code to.
The difficulty of migrating hugely depends on the nature of your project (is it GUI based, how deeply does it rely on MS VC++ being the compiler?)
There is nothing positive about Embarcadero XE, neither their aging IDE neither their aging compiler. Only use it if you're bound to it (legacy software) or if you want to do Delphi.
For C++, do yourself a favor and join 21st century : stick with something more powerful, versatile and modern such as VC++ or Qt.
This question is really a matter of personal opinion.
I personally HATE Visual Studio with a passion, I avoid it like the plague. My exposure to Eclipse has been limited to Java, but even then I've had a hard time working with it.
I have been using C++Builder for 15 years, since v3.0 all the way up to the latest XE6. Yes, it has quirks and limitations, but I still find it the easiest IDE for me to work with and be productive with, once you know how to work with (or around) them. Maybe my experience with it is hindering my ability to work with other IDEs, but so be it. I still prefer C++Builder over any other. But I only use it for Windows development (the VCL is very mature and robust), I don't do cross-platform development with it yet (FireMonkey still has a ways to go to evolve and mature). And I do use plenty of open-source projects with it. Yes, sometimes I have to tweak their projects and/or code to make them compile, but that it usually a one-time deal and then they work fine.
I'd suggest Eclipse.
As an IDE, it takes a little while to get used too, but it is well
worth the effort.
It's available for Mac OS, Linux and Windows.
You need to have Java installed on your computer, but that's
really a non - issue.
It supports Cygwin, MinGW, and the MicrosoftVisual C++ toolchains. The build in CDT Builder is pretty good too.
You can use it to develop for languages other than C++ (Java , JavaScript, PHP ..)
You can extend it's functionality by installing plugins
IT'S FREE!
Did I mention that it has a built in Web Browser ? Really useful for referring to online documentation, while coding.
1.
We have a solution over 1M LOC and VS2010 handles it ok. We especially like /MP switch for compiling on all available CPU cores.
You did not specify your hardware. If you don't yet run on at least i7-2600 + fast SSD, I suggest trying hardware upgrade first.
2.
I used to use Borland tools a lot in the past. Delphi was rather stable; C++ Builder was much more buggy. Couple of years ago I helped to upgrade old Delphi projects to newer Delphi IDE with some service packs installed. And it had bugs even in the basic File IO APIs which have worked since Turbo Pascal. We had to downgrade to a previous version. I expect that quality of C++ Builder won't be much better than of VS2010.
3.
You did not specify what exactly is slow. You may want to convert some projects into components compiled separately. Also make sure you use PCH.
Also it worth investigating if you abuse C++ inclusion model by including a lot of unneeded header files in each and every unit. If, after preprocessing, Intellisense and compiler have to deal with huge amount of code, no IDE can help.
I have not used Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate for C++, rather C# and C# web services development. That being said, as a test between VS 2010 Ultimate and C++Builder XE, I have created a simple VS C++ Windows Forms application to click a button and show "Hello World" through an event handler. Getting the button onto the VS Window Designer is okay, as long as you remember to access View | Toolbox. If not, it will take some time to track down where the visual components are hanging out.
For reasons that do not make any language sense, the button click event handler has a signature that looks like:
System::Void button1_Click(System::Object^ sender, System::EventArgs^ e) {
}
and it goes to the header file as one would expect. The ^ symbol makes little sense. Does using it tie into the CLI/CLR better? I expected a * to indicate a pointer.
After using the default Form1 (only header file created) and subsequently adding a new windows form, I finally obtained the respective cpp file. Maybe the C++ Windows Form Wizard has a bug. Who knows? Anyhow, when adding the button click event by double clicking the button in the designer, the cpp does not obtain the method in either cpp form I tested. Maybe this is normal, I do not know. The end result of this is that after trying to use the MessageBox function within the cpp, it only caused compilation errors. I am sure there is yet another header file that has to be in the include path. I spent no time tracking this down. Trying to set a label component text property caused compilation errors too. About 20 minutes later, I went to C++Builder XE3 in frustration.
In C++Builder, I have tested VCL Forms, FireMonkey Desktop, and FireMonkey Metropolis application creation from the project wizard. Sure enough, I have three different applications saying, "Hello World," in about three minutes total, all calling C++Builder's built in global shortcut function called ShowMessage("insert message here"). The timing could have been slightly different as I did not time it with a stop watch. It took longer to save files with meaningful names than the code itself: one line of typing in the respective click event body in each cpp (not the header).
The other main daily use gotcha with VS, for those of us who love the Brief key map, is that VS is highly challenging to configure into Brief. When doing heavy development in C#, I use C++Builder's editor in Brief mode, saving files as often as I want. VS does correctly detect file updates as you click back to the VS IDE.
On the slowness mentioned by the OP above, I suggest also looking very closely at the hardware platform relative to running Visual Studio. I have noticed that if the .Net framework is out of date, VS will be slow within the IDE. It does not seem to matter which language the project is in either. I use Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate on Parallels with Windows XP Pro, with 2 virtual cores. Generally, VS responds normally within the IDE. While using it, I am NOT thinking, "VS is soooo slow."
Regarding migrating a quarter million lines to C++Builder from VS, I am not sure whether VS event handlers will convert by some wizard or other migration tool. The ^ symbol, if consistently used in all event handlers, may not be a big deal for a regular expression conversion that is custom written. If the project is very thin on the user interface layer and heavy in business rules and data, converting to C++Builder should be relatively easy. I would expect some new coding for the new user interface click events passing the user interaction into the other layers. For prototyping, using data aware components are likely your best bet. In normal application running, expect to have the business rules layer use the STL and built in C++Builder data structures (even the AnsiString c_str() method) to interact with non data aware components. The performance and user experience will likely improve.
Start Edit
A big knock on C++Builder XE3 (note this is two releases behind the current one of five) is that the 64-bit Windows support is only for console applications. The knock is more from not being frequently broadcast on how to use the Add Platform sub-menu that appears when right clicking the mouse over the Target Platforms choice in the Project tree view. This quick method to add more platforms to a project after it may first be targeting 32-bit Windows is virtually painless. A new sub-dialog appears after clicking the sole sub-menu choice and a drop down box appears to select the new operating system and respective 32-bit or 64-bit versions. In my opinion, Embarcadero is not demonstrating often enough how simple it is to add other target platforms. So, to ease all developer's pain if this is not known in advance, I have found three web pages on the Embarcadero site. The first one has pretty pictures of creating a FireMonkey desktop application. Step 5 has the screen capture of the Target Platforms | Add Platform sub-menu choice for adding the Mac OS X platform. It is here titled Creating Your First FireMonkey Application for Desktop Platforms (C++): http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/XE2/en/Creating_Your_First_FireMonkey_Application_for_Desktop_Platforms_%28C%2B%2B%29
The more terse and no picture procedure is here titled Steps in Creating Cross-Platform Applications:
http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/XE2/en/Steps_in_Creating_Cross-Platform_Applications
The Windows centric procedure and a small screen capture is here titled 64-bit Cross-Platform Application Development for Windows:
http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/XE3/en/64-bit_Cross-Platform_Application_Development_for_Windows
I have found on an Embarcadero forum post that an upgrade to the Update 1 XE3 release from the original XE3 release has a Target Platform selection issue. There can be an internal path setting or two that is incorrect, and possibly having to change an original XE3 project file (.cbproj) to enable Win64. Apparently the original release project file has this set to false.
XE5 (note version five as of December 2013) is supposed to have 64-bit Windows support for both console and forms applications (e.g. VCL, FireMonkey Desktop, FireMonkey Metropolis), OS X, iOS (Android coming sometime soon). For the complete list, review the C++Builder feature matrix pdf for all of the XE5 details:
http://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder/cbuilder-feature-matrix.pdf
Since the XE3 Update 1 has been shown to resolve Target Platform selection issues, when compared to the original XE3, there should not be any weird behaviors. I have also come across an Embarcadero post that states from a TeamB member that for mobile applications, the Target Platform choices are filtered such that mixing a desktop platform project with a mobile one is not allowed. So, if one wanted to try creating a desktop application and then with a mouse click force it into an iPhone, some other development tool will have to be used. C++Builder and/or Delphi will not attempt to squeeze desktop components onto a mobile device. You have to start with a mobile application project. Here is the forum link:
https://forums.embarcadero.com/thread.jspa?threadID=96371
(End Edit)
If curious about my overall background, I have used C++Builder since version one, Visual Studio .NET (C# 1.0) and Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate. It seems like Visual Studio concentrates on C# more than any other language. There are eighteen C# projects and fifteen C++ projects when selecting File | New Project. To reach the Visual Studio C++ project area, make sure to reach it by opening the "Other Languages" sub-tree.
In recent Internet posts between Visual Studio latest and greatest and C++Builder latest and greatest, purchase prices vary in the thousands of dollars. Even if never ever having an installation to upgrade either tool, C++Builder remains a bargain compared to Visual Studio. Please conduct thorough research before spending your hard earned cash. Hopefully both tools have 30-day trial installations to compare side by side, as your mileage may vary.

Internal format of Visual Studio .ncb files

I have decided that I really need to get some flowcharts for reverse engineering some code I have inherited. I do not have the Team edition of VS so I cannot use Team's built-in capabilities with Visio. So I thought I would parse the .ncb (Parser Information) files and make charts with dot (from graphviz.org). How hard could that be? But I cannot find any documentation for the innards of that file.
I really don't want to use a commercial application to do the flowcharts. And the free addins I've seen all assume that I am using C# or VB. However, I am using C and C++.
I did try the Microsoft "Visual Studio Learning Pack" which has the "Visual Programming Flow Chart" tool. But it doesn't appear to work with C++. So close!
So, does anybody have pointers to the file format or other suggestions (keep it polite!)?
I don't think you have much chance to be able to parse the NCB files. They are in a proprietary binary format that changes and is likely to change between every single version of visual studio. From what I read somewhere, it's possible that in VS2010 the NCB is going to be discarded and the intellisense information is going to be kept in normal database using SQL Server Express.
Another option you might consider is using some other tool that analyzes your code and builds diagrams and UML charts. Doxygen does this to some extent and there is a plethora of commercial tools that do as well. I have some personal experience with Rational Rose (which might be defunct by now..) and a tool called Together. This list might be of some help
For a structural analysis in the sense of "who calls what", "who inherits/overloads where" and "who reads/writes globals" I once used DeHydra (a mozilla project) for analysis and yed (www.yworks.com) for graph display. Both are free.
Dehydra runs under linux and requires your code to pass gcc compilation. This is not a too serious obstacle, as VC can generate makefiles, which can be hand-modified for gnu make.
In my case, some patching of include files was required, but i could finally get the desired information out.
It took me 3 days to get DeHydra working, another 2 days to tweak makefile and includes and
3 more days to adapt javascript code, which inside DeHydra extracts the required information.
DeHydra + Javascript now delivers in one compiler run a graphml file containing the code structure, which can directly displayed and interactively manipulated in yed.