First time asking a question here, and might not be my last. This is in regards to WiX 3.8
My company is starting to go into the installer business, and one of the requirements I have been tasked to do is to create a multi-disc installation for our product. I have used WiX before for simple patches, but now we want to create a full installation. Some of the requirements include:
Creating external cab files for multiple discs [Which I enabled with setting the 'EmbedCab' property in the media tag to 'no' and setting the disc ID's to each file element with Compression to low]
The finished build will have the 5 discs in separate folders, with the respected external cab files in each [Media tag 'layout' set to destination]
Executing the .msi file inside the 'Disc1' folder [Which works...almost]
The problem I am running into is that when the .msi file is located on the hard disk, either outside the Disc layouts or inside the 'Disc1' subfolder, it cannot find the other .cab files. The requirement I have is that I need to find a way to be able to only prompt for a disc if and only if after searching inside the next subfolder 'Disc2' and finding the next .cab file to install. Therefore it can not only look in the root where the .msi is located, but also check the subfolders for the required cab files. (This almost mimic's InstallShield, but I REALLY don't want to go that route.)
The second issue I have is regards to the bootstrapper. The .exe file needs to embed the .msi file as per the requirement. However, even when disabling caching of the msi file, the bootstrapper seems to start caching all the other .cab files (we are talking about a 20GB installation). Even disabling repair and rollback, the bootstrapper continues to try to cache the cab files into the PackageCache area on my system.
I've looked online and read the WiX books to help find a solution, but I seem to finally hit a dead end. Can anyone give me any thoughts or insight to help with this issue?
Some things I have tried so far:
- Using a custom action (C++) to perform a 'ResolveSource' to try to change the 'SourceDir' property to continue installation
- Thought about making a custom bootstrapper to disable the package caching event entirely, but I have no idea where to start.
Any advice, direction or even a sample to help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Related
This question have been asked numerous times, but I have not managed to get an answer that I am happy with. Probably because the most answers is of "how do I do this?" type and also get "this way you do this" answers.
The problem I have is that I need to use absolute paths when I want to reference to images in Xcode (version 6.0.1). I am quite sure that I could place the images in my working directory which is something like:
/Users/patrikek/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/ChessGame-
ftpbqerfsenxxbfvneyzfwdmtwjk/Build/Products/Debug
Then add the file to some Xcode group in project navigator (eg. images/myImg.png) and I would be able to reference the file as myImg.png (since I have not foldered the image inside my working directory). I am also quite sure that the project navigator stuff would not b required for this to work.
And after this introduction comes the questions:
1) Is it necessary to place all images and other resources in the current working directory? Also, if not what is the best way to store folders in a program and is it necessary to name the folder containing images to Resources?
2) Is it possible to arrange files using the project navigator? What I am after is to use the project navigator only and let Xcode worry about the details of copying files and so. It seems somehow unnecessary to have a project navigator, when the physical files are not packaged in the same way. It does also seem error prone to update the project navigator and the physical hierarchy independently of each other.
An example:
I create a folder images in the Project navigator, inside that folder am I placing a reference to the image using the usual way in the project navigator. Is it now possible to make Xcode arrange so that I can do a call images/myImg.png when I want to load the image in some function (without me doing anything, since if I move many images to my working directory I may forget one and I may also spell images wrong by mistake if I create another folder in my working space). Also what have happened inside Xcode when this action was done?
Since I am not at all familiar with Xcode yet I may have got something wrong here, but the core of this problem is to find out where the files physical location must/should be and if there is some way to let Xcode do this by using the project navigator.
BR Patrik
Xcode does not manage images the way you have presumed that it does. Take a look at the 2013 WWDC "What's New in Xcode" video to see how Xcode 5 and Xcode 6 organize and manage images for any given project. When you have configured the asset catalogues for your project correctly, it wouldn't matter where the original images live on disk. As long as you have dragged the right assets into the right catalogues, your projects will work. The good news is that you only need to configure images once and change only the ones that change once done. For details, see this wwdc video: http://devstreaming.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2013/400xex2xbskwa5bkxr17zihju9uf/400/ref.mov
Once an image is configured in the asset catalogue, you can refer to it with or without it's file extension. For example, you can refer to "example.png" as "example" in your code. Hence, "myImg.png" can be "myImg" or "myImg.png" in code. No need to worry about which subdirectory contains it.
Now if your question has to do with runtime assets, again your development system directory structure would not matter. If that is the case, then you might have to re-ask your question. I would be glad to help you there as well--if that's what you want to know.
This question have been asked numerous times, but I have not managed to get an answer that I am happy with. Probably because the most answers is of "how do I do this?" type and also get "this way you do this" answers.
The problem I have is that I need to use absolute paths when I want to reference to images in Xcode (version 6.0.1). I am quite sure that I could place the images in my working directory which is something like:
/Users/patrikek/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/ChessGame-
ftpbqerfsenxxbfvneyzfwdmtwjk/Build/Products/Debug
Then add the file to some Xcode group in project navigator (eg. images/myImg.png) and I would be able to reference the file as myImg.png (since I have not foldered the image inside my working directory). I am also quite sure that the project navigator stuff would not b required for this to work.
And after this introduction comes the questions:
1) Is it necessary to place all images and other resources in the current working directory? Also, if not what is the best way to store folders in a program and is it necessary to name the folder containing images to Resources?
2) Is it possible to arrange files using the project navigator? What I am after is to use the project navigator only and let Xcode worry about the details of copying files and so. It seems somehow unnecessary to have a project navigator, when the physical files are not packaged in the same way. It does also seem error prone to update the project navigator and the physical hierarchy independently of each other.
An example:
I create a folder images in the Project navigator, inside that folder am I placing a reference to the image using the usual way in the project navigator. Is it now possible to make Xcode arrange so that I can do a call images/myImg.png when I want to load the image in some function (without me doing anything, since if I move many images to my working directory I may forget one and I may also spell images wrong by mistake if I create another folder in my working space). Also what have happened inside Xcode when this action was done?
Since I am not at all familiar with Xcode yet I may have got something wrong here, but the core of this problem is to find out where the files physical location must/should be and if there is some way to let Xcode do this by using the project navigator.
BR Patrik
Xcode does not manage images the way you have presumed that it does. Take a look at the 2013 WWDC "What's New in Xcode" video to see how Xcode 5 and Xcode 6 organize and manage images for any given project. When you have configured the asset catalogues for your project correctly, it wouldn't matter where the original images live on disk. As long as you have dragged the right assets into the right catalogues, your projects will work. The good news is that you only need to configure images once and change only the ones that change once done. For details, see this wwdc video: http://devstreaming.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2013/400xex2xbskwa5bkxr17zihju9uf/400/ref.mov
Once an image is configured in the asset catalogue, you can refer to it with or without it's file extension. For example, you can refer to "example.png" as "example" in your code. Hence, "myImg.png" can be "myImg" or "myImg.png" in code. No need to worry about which subdirectory contains it.
Now if your question has to do with runtime assets, again your development system directory structure would not matter. If that is the case, then you might have to re-ask your question. I would be glad to help you there as well--if that's what you want to know.
Well I am stuck with this, and I have a few questions:
How will you check whether the folder has been modified without touching the files?
"Last Modified" changes when a file is created/deleted, when a subfolder is created/deleted, but doesn't change when a file is modified (For example, when its size changes).
If a file size changes then folder size will also vary, but there is no API to find the folder size in Windows without touching the file.
Say I give some values to every folder, now when its size changes will that value change by default? (An expected example may be, its hash value?)
or what will change by default in windows when a folder is modified? (Other than its size.)
Thanks in advance.
If you want to monitor a folder for changes, you can use the api ReadDirectoryChangesW. However, if you want to check it offline then you would need to scan the complete directory & check each file modified date, folder creation date etc. Compare it with the last scan time.
You can stop scanning whenever you find at least one change to save time when scanning.
If your app has administrator's rights then you can find changes in a folder by reading the NTFS change journal.
I have following scenario:
The main software I wrote uses a database created by a simulator. This database is around 10 GB big at the moment, so I want to keep only one copy of that data per system.
Assuming I have following projects:
Main Software using the data, located at /SimData
DLL using the data for debugging, searching for data at /SimData
Debugging tool to parse the image database, searching for the data at /SimData
Since I do not want to have all those programs have their own copy of SimData (not only to decrease place used, but also to ensure that all Simulation data used is always up to date for all programs).
I created for the DLL and Debugging Utility a link named SimData to MainSoftware/SimData, but when opening a file with "SimData\MyFile.data" it cannot find it, only the MainSoftware with the ACTUAL SimData folder can find it.
How can I use the MainSoftware/SimData folder without setting absolute paths?
This is on Windows 7 x64
I agree with Peter about adding the DB location as a configurable parameter. A common place to store that is in the registry.
however, If you want to create links that will be recognized by your software, try hardlinks. . fsutil should do the trick as described here.
You need a way to configure the database location. You could use an INI or other configuration file, or a registry setting, or a command-line input, or an environment variable. Or You could write your program to search a directory hierarchy... for example, if the various modules are usually siblings of each other in your directory tree, you could search for SimData/MyFile.data, ../SimData/MyFile.data, ../../MainSoftware/SimData/Myfile.data, and use the first one found.
Which answer is the "right one" depends on your situation.
I have a simple build definition which I want to use to build just one project, and every time I choose to run this build, I want to get latest from the branch/directories that pertain only to the project in question. How do I do that? The call to "Get Workspace" gets everything from source control, and I do not want to (or need to, for that matter) get latest from everything for various reasons.
I hope I am not asking for much.
Thanks in advance.
Check the workspace mapping in the build definition. The build only gets the items that you have specified over there. If you want to exclude some folders within the path that you are mapping, you can choose to cloak some folders.
You can adjust your ItemsToBuild in Process Tab in Required section