How to modify the dialogs of Visual Studio Installer Project?

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VS2010

I am creating an installer using Visual Studio 2010. All feature works fine with the installer. But I want to do some additional things on this. As users can change the installation directory, I am installing the app in [SELECTEDDIR]\MYAPP folder. But the problem is when user selects the location for example F:\ then the location box of the GUI only shows F:\ but I want to show "F:\MYAPP". How to accomplish this?

EDITED:
I have done the following in BrowseDlg in my code. but it is not working it still doesn't shows the appended folder name in the location text.

XML

<!--<Browse Dlg>-->
      <Dialog Id="BrowseDlg1" Width="370" Height="270" Title="[ProductName] Setup" NoMinimize="yes">
        
        <Control Id="PathEdit" Type="PathEdit" X="84" Y="202" Width="261" Height="18"
          Property="_BrowseProperty" Indirect="yes" />

        <Control Id="OK" Type="PushButton" X="304" Y="243" Width="56" Height="17"
   Default="yes" Text="[ButtonText_OK]">
          <Publish Event="SetTargetPath" Value="[_BrowseProperty][FolderCust]">1</Publish>
          <Publish Event="EndDialog" Value="Return">1</Publish>
        </Control>

        <Control Id="Cancel" Type="PushButton" X="240" Y="243" Width="56" Height="17"
          Cancel="yes" Text="[ButtonText_Cancel]">
          <Publish Event="Reset" Value="0">1</Publish>
          <Publish Event="EndDialog" Value="Return">1</Publish>
        </Control>

        <Control Id="ComboLabel" Type="Text" X="25" Y="58" Width="44" Height="10"
    TabSkip="no" Text="Look in:" />

        <Control Id="DirectoryCombo" Type="DirectoryCombo" X="70" Y="55" Width="220" Height="80"
          Property="_BrowseProperty" Indirect="yes" Fixed="yes" Remote="yes">
          <Subscribe Event="IgnoreChange" Attribute="IgnoreChange" />
        </Control>

        <Control Id="Up" Type="PushButton" X="298" Y="55" Width="19" Height="19"
    ToolTip="Up One Level" Icon="no" FixedSize="yes" IconSize="16" Text="Up">
          <Publish Event="DirectoryListUp" Value="0">1</Publish>
        </Control>

        <Control Id="NewFolder" Type="PushButton" X="325" Y="55" Width="19" Height="19"
          ToolTip="Create A New Folder" Icon="no" FixedSize="yes" IconSize="16" Text="New">
          <Publish Event="DirectoryListNew" Value="0">1</Publish>
        </Control>

        <Control Id="DirectoryList" Type="DirectoryList" X="25" Y="83" Width="320" Height="110"
    Property="_BrowseProperty" Sunken="yes" Indirect="yes" TabSkip="no" />

        <Control Id="Back" Type="PushButton" X="180" Y="243" Width="56" Height="17"
  Text="[ButtonText_Back]">
          <Publish Event="NewDialog" Value="CustomizeDlg1">1</Publish>
        </Control>

      </Dialog>

EDITED2: Directory hierarchy code is shown below

XML

<Directory Id="TARGETDIR" Name="SourceDir">
      <Directory Id="ProgramFilesFolder">
        <Directory Id="CompanyFolder" Name="My Company">
          <Directory Id="KONASECUREPASSFOLDER" Name="KonaSecurePass">
            <Directory Id="INSTALLLOCATION" Name="isWixProject">
              <!--<Merge Id="isWixProjectMM" SourceFile="$(var.isWixProjectMM.TargetPath)" DiskId="1" Language="1033"/>-->
            </Directory>
          </Directory>
        </Directory>
      </Directory>
    </Directory>

Posted 15-Apr-15 19:34pm

Naseef-Ur-Rahman Chy

Updated 20-Apr-15 19:00pm

v3

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 16-Apr-15 2:06am

You are talking something outrageous. What you are using for installation toolkit? Isn't it Setup project type bundled with Visual Studio?
—SA

Naseef-Ur-Rahman Chy 16-Apr-15 2:51am

Yes the setup project is bundled with Visual Studio.

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-15T21:01:00

Solution 1

Naseef-Ur-Rahman wrote:

Yes the setup project is bundled with Visual Studio.

Do yourself a big favor and listen to my good friendly advice: throw out this trash. This project type is discontinued to Microsoft, by some very good reasons, and is not even legitimate to Visual Studio.

These day, the really legitimate product is open-source (first Microsoft's open-source product) WiX (presently provided by Microsoft-sponsored Outercurve Foundation, by Microsoft Reciprocal License):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiX,
http://wixtoolset.org/,
http://wix.codeplex.com/.

This is the only product I know correctly integrated with MSBuild and fully compliant with MSBuild project standard. The problem you mentioned would sound ridiculous. I know because I using it myself.

[EDIT]

This is a very basic document on the user-entered target directory: http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/manual/v3/wixui/dialog_reference/wixui_installdir.html.

I suggest you read WiX documentation and just search information on your concern on the Web, before you ask further questions yourself. Community of developers actively shares a lot of solutions, but your problem is very standard.

—SA

Posted 15-Apr-15 21:01pm

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov

Updated 16-Apr-15 6:22am

v3

Comments

Naseef-Ur-Rahman Chy 16-Apr-15 12:01pm

I have already tried WIX. But couldn't find the way. I believe you do understand my purpose. Do you know how can I accomplish my purpose using WIX? Thanks in advance

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 16-Apr-15 12:18pm

I perfectly understand your purpose and think its more than reasonable. Well, with WiX, these are default feature you don't even have to customize. The input language is declarative, based on XML, which is orders by magnitude more maintainable; everything is explicitly written in text, Intellisense is supported, declarations are parametrized and thus reusable, and so on. You can declare prerequisite, install dependencies, and so on. This is one of the predefined steps in WiX, as well as many other common steps (file system, registry, firewall settings, change or permission and a lot more).

Now, the installation I use shows the dialog with default target directory with standard way of writing a custom directory (entered by the user, optionally). This is a standard behavior.

I suggest you follow my advice and also accept this answer formally.
In all cases, your follow-up questions will be welcome.

—SA

Naseef-Ur-Rahman Chy 17-Apr-15 0:01am

Can you please share some codes or project that does what I meant to do? i.e Appending the application folder name in the target directory everytime whenever user changes directory location and show it in GUI.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 17-Apr-15 1:03am

I don't understand why appending, what to append to what. This is not standard (and not sure if it reasonable behavior). Usually you are given "Program Files/ProductName" or "Program Files (x86)/ProductName" directory and can change it to anything at all. It's totally up to the user to provide any directory. But — Windows Installer weirdness — net anything at all. You cannot freely choose between "Program Files (x86)" and "Program Files", which does not really makes a lot of sense.
—SA

Naseef-Ur-Rahman Chy 17-Apr-15 1:20am

Suppose user changed the installation path and opted to selected another drive. Then I want to create a folder and install the product on the folder. And I want to show the installation location along with the created folder in the GUI where location is displayed.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 17-Apr-15 1:33am

The user just specifies full file path, as soon as it is custom. What's wrong with it?
—SA

Naseef-Ur-Rahman Chy 17-Apr-15 1:53am

Null Soft installer supports this. So, I want to support that as well. User may provide the full location but I want to create another folder and install the program in that folder. This is a requirement.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 17-Apr-15 2:12am

Ah, now I understand: you don't force the user into any form of the directories, you merely add a subdirectory. In WiX, this is defined at the level of the directories. You can create any directory structure under target directory. Basically, you are supposed to declare directory structure in WiX, using Directory elements, bit top parent element is variable, depends on user choice. In the next code sample, this is TARGETDIR:
http://wix.tramontana.co.hu/tutorial/com-expression-syntax-miscellanea/creating-directories.
See also: http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/manual/v3/xsd/wix/directory.html.
—SA

Naseef-Ur-Rahman Chy 17-Apr-15 2:16am

Exactly. I also want to show the Directory along with my created sub directory in the GUI where selected locations usually shown.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 17-Apr-15 2:23am

That would require a custom dialog. This is a whole big part of WiX XML schema.
I am actually using some custom dialog for some miniature feature (already forgot what it was, something which was non-standard combination of controls in the version I used, couple of major versions ago; it was pretty easy; for a standard dialog, you actually just use one of the standard dialog names; in non-standard, you actually describe the dialog by actually describing logical hierarchy of controls to be included).
—SA

Naseef-Ur-Rahman Chy 17-Apr-15 2:27am

I wanted to avoid creating custom dialog. As the time line is not proper to create the custom dialog and I do not have the proper knowledge also. Can you please provide an example code how I can develop custom dialog? It would be really helpful.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 17-Apr-15 2:31am

Maybe later. Will you remind me, say, tomorrow? I actually used a solution I found on a forum. How can you avoid the non-standard if your requirements are non-standard? Anyway, review standard UI first.
—SA

Naseef-Ur-Rahman Chy 17-Apr-15 2:43am

I have already created an installer using Standard WIX UI. Ok, I will remind you tomorrow.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 17-Apr-15 12:13pm

Already created? Well, it's a pleasure to deal with you, as it is helping someone who can actually use the advice and make things working.

Please remind me again (just once again), as I would need to look my code on a different system I don't have with me right now. I'll try to look at it today.

—SA

Naseef-Ur-Rahman Chy 18-Apr-15 4:00am

This is a reminder :)

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 18-Apr-15 19:27pm

I'm sorry, I inspected my custom dialog source code and found that it will hardly give you the idea of presenting all your target sub-directories. I haven't revisit those two files of my WiX code for a while and already forget some major detail. My custom dialog merely combines some standard controls found in some standard dialogs, while none of the standard dialogs would not show this exact control set. This won't be informative for you.

Instead, I found an example of different dialog design, showing the sub-directories in the style typical for Visual Studio and other products. Pay attention for the text field "Location" showing the path name of the selected node in the options tree view above. It looks like it is assumed that the selection/creation of the parent target directory for a product is done in another dialog (another wizard step). As you can see, this dialog "Browse to the destination step" is also demonstrated and explained.

Even if the selection of optional sub-components could be not what you want, you also can make them all mandatory (again, like in Visual Studio). More importantly, it will give you the idea how to achieve that in a custom way, as this is in the (third-party) article on WiX UI customization: http://wix.tramontana.co.hu/tutorial/user-interface-revisited/customizations-galore.

I hope this information will be enough for you to learn these techniques. If something is not clear, you are welcome to ask your follow-up questions, but please understand that I did not do everything from scratch myself; I learned some techniques with the help of some available code samples, put some of them together and then improved some important features. You probably will be able to do the same. This is how it often works out with WiX: the community of developers provide a lot of useful information, which is a really important addition to official WiX documentation.

—SA

Naseef-Ur-Rahman Chy 20-Apr-15 11:32am

I have walked through the link and tried to make the code work. But it is not working when I have tried to append a folder named MYAPP after the location selected while setting the target path. But it is not working. Please check my edited question.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 20-Apr-15 14:54pm

I haven't done that, but I suspect you should not have done append. You chose the way the top-level target directory is chosen. And then, based on your directory structure (which you didn't show), you define the inner directory structure.

Here is the fragment I have, for example:


		<Directory Id="TARGETDIR" Name="SourceDir">

			<Directory Id="$(var.defaultInstallationDirectory)">
				<Directory Id="CompanyDirectory" Name="$(var.shortCompanyName)">
					<Directory Id="CUSTOM.INSTALLATION.DIRECTORY" Name="$(var.productDirName)"/>
				</Directory>
			</Directory>

                        <!-- ... -->

		</Directory>

Then, on top if it, you have Features and Components. In other fragments, it looks like this:


		<Feature Id="DefaultFeature" Level="1">
			<ComponentRef Id="ApplicationFiles" />
			<ComponentRef Id="FirstComponent" />
			<ComponentRef Id="SecondComponent" />
			<ComponentRef Id="ApplicationShortcut" />
			<ComponentRef Id="ApplicationShortcutOnDesktop" />
			<ComponentRef Id="PermissionsChange" />
			<ComponentRef Id="SomeApplicationTool" />
		</Feature>

		<DirectoryRef Id="CUSTOM.INSTALLATION.DIRECTORY">
			<Component Id="ApplicationFiles" Guid="...">
				<File Source="$(var.SomeMainProject.TargetPath)" Id="entryPointAssembly"/>
				<File Source="$(var.SomeComponent.TargetPath)" Id="SomeComponent"/>
				<!-- ... -->
			</Component>
			<Component Id="FirstComponent" Guid="...">
				<File Source="$(var.FirstComponent.SomeAssembly.TargetPath)" Id="Thermo.CTS.Scimitar"/>
				<File Source="$(var.FirstComponent.SomeOtherAssembly.TargetPath)" Id="Thermo.CTS.Scimitar.Utility.Win32"/>
				<!-- ... -->
			</Component>
			<!-- ... -->
		</DirectoryRef>

(I put all these structures under the <Fragment> element.)

Are you getting the idea? I filled in only one, default feature with components, but you can spread all components between several features. You can make some default and some optional in UI; I haven't done that. And then, your UI is supposed pick up all the features, with all components, and, ultimately, the paths to the files composed by the components, to show the paths when the user walks the features through the UI.

—SA

Naseef-Ur-Rahman Chy 21-Apr-15 0:58am

I have added the code of my directory hierarchy on my questions EDITED2 portion. Please check.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 21-Apr-15 8:53am

Sorry, it's hard just to check. You have to work through all the project. Does it all work? Does your UI work with it?
—SA