Our installer installs a USB driver for some custom hardware. During development, we frequently uninstall one version and reinstall another (usually a newer version but sometimes older - the driver never changes.) Despite the InstallShield "Component" being marked "Uninstall No" on the component configuration page, the driver is in fact removed.
When the new version is installed, the driver is once again reinstalled, but since it has previously been removed, none of the USB devices are found. If we physically remove and reinstall the USB modules, the driver is loaded properly.
How do I tell InstallShield to leave the driver alone during uninstallation? Truthfully, it is, at worst, an inconvenience, but it is highly problematic that making an explicit configuration setting that says "Uninstall No" is ignored by InstallShield.
You could mark the component to which the driver is associated as permanent, but then there's no way to remove it.
It sounds like you need to structure things differently. Either you can use an approach that doesn't fully uninstall things during an upgrade (such as a major upgrade with RemoveExistingProducts scheduled late), or by splitting the driver into a separate package so that there's no need to try to uninstall the driver.
If you split the packages, you could either install the driver package as a prerequisite dependency that would be uninstalled manually from Programs and Features, or you could leverage the Suite project and just upgrade the non-driver package. With the either of those approaches you would not have to worry about the scheduling of RemoveExistingProducts in the non-driver package.
Related
Hi we are currently using Quickbuild for our Automation Jobs,apparently as we tried to deploy some changes we are unable to proceed due to this:
Does anyone know how to fix this? I have tried updating our git version to the latest, and I have also tried to install a cygwin latest version, none of this has solved our problem.
https://www.cygwin.com/faq.html#faq.using.fixing-find_fast_cwd-warnings
4.45.
How do I fix find_fast_cwd warnings?
Older Cygwin releases asked users to report problems to the mailing list with the message:
find_fast_cwd: WARNING: Couldn't compute FAST_CWD pointer. Please report
this problem to the public mailing list cygwin#cygwin.com
Recent Cygwin releases changed this to the message:
This typically occurs if you're using an older Cygwin version on a newer Windows.
Please update to the latest available Cygwin version from https://cygwin.com/.
If the problem persists, please see https://cygwin.com/problems.html.
This is not serious, just a warning that Cygwin may not always be able to exactly emulate all aspects of Unix current directory handling under your Windows release.
Unfortunately some projects and products still distribute older Cygwin releases which may not fully support newer Windows releases, instead of installing the current release from the Cygwin project. They also may not provide any obvious way to keep the Cygwin packages their application uses up to date with fixes for security issues and upgrades.
The solution is simply downloading and running the Cygwin Setup program, following the instructions in the Internet Setup section of ``Setting Up Cygwin'' in the Cygwin User's Guide.
Please exit from all applications before running the Cygwin Setup program. When running Setup, you should not change most of the values presented, just select the Next button in most cases, as you already have a Cygwin release installed, and only want to upgrade your current installation. You should make your own selection if the internet connection to your system requires a proxy; and you must always pick an up to date Cygwin download (mirror) site, preferably the site nearest to your system for faster downloads, as shown, with more details to help you choose, on the Mirror Sites web page.
The Cygwin Setup program will download and apply upgrades to all packages required for Cygwin itself and installed applications. Any problems with applying updates, or the application after updates, should be reported to the project or product supplier for remedial action.
As Cygwin is a volunteer project, unable to provide support for older releases installed by projects or products, it would be helpful to let other users know what project or product you installed, in a quick email.
I've been using NVM for Windows to run two versions of Node on my system, the latest version and the LTS version. However, I haven't updated Node since installing NVM. I would like to update both versions to their current iterations (11.5.0 and 10.14.2 at the time of writing), ideally without having to reinstall all of my global packages for each. I know the original NVM has this capability with the --reinstall-packages-from flag, but it doesn't look like there's anything similar in NVM for Windows.
You're right, there's nothing similar in NVM for Windows. If it would be useful for you, you could always request it by opening an issue on the github page.
It sounds like you already know how to install 11.5.0 and 10.14.2, and that once you do, running nvm use 11 or nvm use 10 will automatically select the latest appropriate version (but you'll still have to manually reinstall any global packages).
This might be an opportunity to take stock of global packages, they often cause more trouble than they are worth. (In general, the fewer global packages installed the better.)
It's unsupported by design
https://github.com/coreybutler/nvm-windows/issues/236
NVM4W provides a more minimalistic approach, focusing on node version
management, not npm management. NVM4W leaves workflow customization to
the end user... because a) it's not hard, and b) it's very
opinionated.
The statement "switching node version needs reinstallation of all
packages in most cases" is unsubstantiated. This doesn't mean it's not
true, but there aren't any stats to back this claim. There are plenty
of use cases where this is not the case, such as developing original
modules with forward/backwards compatibility.
Third, automating this process, either forcibly or by default, has a
number of unintended consequences in a Windows environment. See the
Roaming Profiles use case for an example.
Even if this were a non-default optional command, it still strays from
node version management into npm management. This is an entirely
different problem (and a much bigger problem).
When installing a .MSI file using msiexec in silent mode, is it possible to automate it such that on installation failure it rollbacks to the previous version? Assuming that on installation an older application version is already installed.
Yes, restoring the old application version via rollback upon an installation failure is actually a built-in feature of Windows Installer, but you need to configure things correctly to get it to work as you require.
Windows Installer rollback will work as you request if you use: 1) a minor upgrade or 2) a properly sequenced major upgrade that uninstalls the older versions after successfully updating all files. If the major upgrade is set to uninstall the old version before installing the new, the rollback is not available since the uninstall is already over, and the new installer will hence leave nothing installed if it fails and rolls back.
Important: For minor upgrades and for late uninstall of old version in major upgrades to work correctly, all MSI component rules must be followed 100% accurately.
When thinking about a major upgrade that uninstalls the old version after updating, you can view it as a patching operation without having the update packaged as a patch. Windows Installer will actually run a diff on the old and new version and then implement only the required changes, leaving the rest of the application untouched. Depending on the application structure and number of files, this can be significantly faster to install as well.
Late-sequenced major upgrades are also a way to prevent configuration files from being reverted to their original installation status during upgrades. This is a classic issue where config files are changed after installation, uninstalled during a major upgrade and then being reinstalled giving the impression that they are reverted, when they are actually freshly reinstalled.
I have written about Windows Installer Rollback before. Might be worth a read.
No, this is not possible. A major upgrade uninstalls the old version before installing your new one. So when the new install fails, the old version is already removed.
There is a possibility but it involves changing the upgrade sequence which is not always an easy thing to achieve. You should move the RemoveExistingProducts after InstallExecute action
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa371197(v=vs.85).aspx
A beginner's Cygwin question here - I'd like to install a newer version of Cygwin (the latest, which is 1.7.9) on a few Windows 2008 Server boxes which currently have rather an old version (1.5.25). I need to do an offline, silent install, and I'm currently deciding whether to do some sort of manually produced list of changed/added/removed files, or just replace the old install with the new. The install is quite big (80 odd megs), so just doing the differences might make sense here. It looks like there is nothing in the way of registry servering or so on required to install Cygwin -you just copy the files somewhere, add it the the path and you're good to go.
One problem, though, is that looking at what's changed between old and new reveals that some of the files the most recent install has used are actually older versions that what we've already got. Ie cygintl-8.dll, envsubst.exe, gettext.exe. Surely you can't mix and match versions?
I'd appreciate it if a more experienced Cygwin user could reply with a few hints as to the best approach here.
There's always an official config.ini file that lists a recommended version of each package, plus often both newer and older versions than the recommended one. When you do an installation with setup.exe, you can elect to use the bleeding edge versions for some or all of the packages. Perhaps your 1.5.25 version was installed with all the bleeding-edge packages, and the 1.7.9 just accepted the defaults. It's not unlikely that some sets of old/current/new packages hadn't changed between those two cygwin versions.
In general, you can mix and match a lot of things, just as you can on Linux. You can't take an old version of the core cygwin1.dll library and expect new packages to run against it; but not all the packages have to be in lockstep.
I have about a few problems with a new install of the Qt SDK. I probably only need advice, but specific answers are also welcome. Before I begin a mini-story, I am running RHEL5 on academic license under VirtualBox on OSX 10.6. Using Qt version 4.5.3. This is my situation...
1.) I couldn't compile because g++ wasn't found. I fixed this by creating a link: g++ -> g++34. This allowed me to compile but it generated more errors at link-time. I had installed the framework in my home directory unintentionally so I uninstalled/reinstalled the entire SDK to /usr/local/qt.
2.) At this point I could compile but the linker complained about a missing freetype package. I had that already installed but wasn't sure why it couldn't be found. So I installed a few packages that I thought might be missing like libqt4-devel and libqt4-devel-debug. I also installed a few other general programming packages for later use.
3.) Somehwere in this process I can no longer run qmake. I ran it before and I have it installed at /usr/local/qt/qt/bin/qmake. I could create a link to it (though I shouldn't have to OR I could ensure that the location was in the PATH var). However, at this point Qt Creator says there's no Qt installation found. I re-pointed it to the installation location (using Tools/Options) but it still won't run qmake or anything else for that matter...
I only need this linux install to compile and test my Qt projects which I am developing in OSX. So my question is, should I just wipe this RHEL install and start over? And if so, should I use something else like Ubuntu? I am having plenty of hassles that I don't want to deal with as is. Note, this project will require good OpenGL support.
Is there a particular reason that you don't simply use the Qt package that's part of RHEL?
If for some reason you need to build your own, you can get all of the build dependancies with:
$ yum install yum-utils
$ yum-builddep <whatever the qt package's name is>
#scotchi is right, and you should try to use the Qt package that comes with your system unless you need a very different version. I don't know what version of Qt comes with RHEL but if its not up-to-date enough for you (and it might not be, see below) then you could consider changing OS versions. I would only do this after trying his suggestion though, because you may be able to get things working without the hassle of a full OS install.
Now, as to why you might want to switch: RHEL is, as its name ("Enterprise Linux") indicates aimed at companies who want to run servers, or large deployments of desktops. It emphasizes stability and reliability over being cutting edge. Fairly often the version of the compiler and development libraries lag a little behind the curve. This is what their clients want: a stable platform they can develop against and run programs on for a period of time, not constantly needing to keep up with the latest changes, and thoroughly tested. But for people doing development at home it may not be necessary to stay that conservative. I don't know if this is for work, school or personal programming, but it sounds to me like you should move to one of the more desktop-oriented distros. Ubuntu is great, as is Fedora. If you prefer a RHEL-like environment, then choose Fedora.