wix.exe msi decompile binary file difference

[ListechAu]

Question

Hello,

I'm migrating from WiX v3.x to v6.0x and I'm currently working of the patching side of my build process. With v3.x I would use melt.exe to extract the binaries from the baseline MSI for use in patching. With v6.0.x I assume I should be using wixe.exe msi decompile to extract the baseline binaries.

The problem I'm experiencing is that decompile appears to name the binaries it extracts from the MSI based the File column rather than the FileName column in the File table. This is okay for most cases because in my WiX authoring, I typically set the File@Id to be the same as the actual file name.

However, in a couple of cases I cannot set the File@Id to be the file name because it contains characters that are invalid for a File@Id. For example, the OpenSSL binary that I include contains '-' characters that are not allowed in a File@Id attribute and therefore has to be different to the file name, so I authored it like this: <File Id="Libcrypto11x64.dll" Source="Libcrypto-1_1-x64.dll" />

I want to build my patches using the .wixpdb rather the .msi method for performance reasons, but with the decompiled file name in the baseline being different to the file name in the update obviously causes it to fail.

I have looked at not using wix.exe msi decompile but instead using msiexec.exe /a to extract the baseline binaries but this exports the files to their nominated folders and therefore is no good for v6.0.x wixpdb patching.

Is there some way I can extract baseline binaries suitable for .wixpdb patch builds and have the true file name exported?

Thanks, Darren

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[robmen]

Have you tried patching in WiX v6 with .wixpdbs and found the performance slower? Patching is done a lot differently than from WiX v3 and some of the behaviors that were problematic in v3 aren't in v4+.

[ListechAu]

Thanks for your response. I have run a few tests using WiX v6 patching and you are correct, the .msi based patching has almost the same performance as the .wixpdb based patching. I will use MSI based patching from now on. Thanks for the tip.

The only issue I found with MSI based patching was if the target and update packages have the same name, then the -bindpaths for the locations of the target and update packages don't appear to resolve correctly because an empty patch is created. I was able to overcome this issue by providing the full pathname in the BaslineFile and UpdateFile parameters, something like the following:

<PatchBaseline Id="RTM" BaselineFile="C:\PathToBaselineMsi\MyPackage.msi" UpdateFile="C:\PathToUpdatedMsi\MyPackage.msi" />

Thanks, Darren