使用WiX将参数传递给Windows Service的安装程序类

Question

I'm migrating a Windows Service from Visual Studio 2010 to VS2012 and, as this one does not support Visual Studio Setup Projects, I'm trying to recreate my Setup project using WiX.

On VS2010, I used the standard Textboxes forms from the User Interface to pass some parameters to my Installer Class that would use this information to instantiate a DbContext of Entity Framework and deploy the Database with the ObjectContext.CreateDatabase() method.

Here is an excerpt of how I do this on my Installer Class:

 public override void Install(System.Collections.IDictionary stateSaver)
    {
        base.Install(stateSaver);

        string dataSource = string.IsNullOrEmpty(Context.Parameters["DataSource"]) ? "." : Context.Parameters["DataSource"];
        // some more code...
    }

Is it possible to specify this parameters with WiX?

I was trying to do it by passing the parameters on the "Argument" parameter of the WiX's Xml, but the installer doesn't seem to accept it (it does not accuse any errors, but acts as if I was not passing any parameter at all.

<ServiceInstall Id="ServiceInstaller"
                          Type="ownProcess"
                          Vital="yes"
                          Name="NFeConnectorService"
                          DisplayName="NFeConnector Service"
                          Description="Servico de Mensageria para NFe"
                          Start="auto"
                          Account="LocalSystem"
                          ErrorControl="ignore"
                          Interactive="no"
                          Arguments="/InitialCatalog=&quot;NFeConnector2&quot; " />

I've also tried with the following syntaxes without success:

Arguments="/InitialCatalog=NFeConnector2"

Arguments="InitialCatalog=NFeConnector2" 

Does anyone have any idea on how can I pass this arguments to my Installer Class?

Answer 1

It's unlikely you'll get this to work. The issue is that Visual Studio installer classes are not called directly by Windows Installer. There's an undocumented interface that calls a C++ Dll that then calls your assembly and installer class via reflection. VS generates a call to this C++ Dll passing some undocumented parameters concatenated with your string. I don't know what you've tried, but unless you have reverse engineered these calls and inluded the C++ Dll, figured out the Dll entrypoints and parameters then it won't work.

The short answer is don't bother. Installer classes are only a Visual Studio thing, which is why they don't migrate. WiX has support for C# custom actions (see things like WIX - Adding a C# custom action code ) and get away from installer classes.