Azure Pipelines Advanced Installer

[juan.01]

Hi,

We are using azure pipelines for building our installers. We have an Azure Agent installed in Windows Server for running pipelines. In this Windows Server we have multiple versions of Advanced Installer.

In Azure Pipelines task we have specified the Advanced Installer Version to use but it seems that the pipeline is always using the latest.

Code: Select all

- task: AdvancedInstaller@2
  displayName: 'Create Installer'
  inputs:
    advinstVersion: '20.8'
    advinstLicense: '$(AI.licenseKey)'
    aipPath: 'Installer\ServiceInstaller.aip'
    aipOutputFolder: '$(OUTPUT_DIR_ARTIFACTS)'
    aipExtraCommands: |
      SetProductCode -langid 1033
      SetDigitalCertificateFile -file "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\App Certification Kit\XXXXX.pfx"
      SetVersion $(SwVersion.Service).$(BUILD_NUMBER)

Here is the log for this pipeline task. As you can see it is using a different version of AI. It seems that it is using the 21.0.1 version.

Code: Select all

Starting: Create Installer
==============================================================================
Task         : Advanced Installer Build
Description  : Build setup packages using Advanced Installer.
Version      : 2.0.11
Author       : Caphyon
Help         : 
==============================================================================
Downloading: https://www.advancedinstaller.com/downloads/updates.ini
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Caphyon\Advanced Installer 21.0.1\bin\x86\AdvancedInstaller.com" /execute C:\vsts-agent-win-x64-2.217.2\_work\30\s\Installer\ServiceInstaller.aip C:\vsts-agent-win-x64-2.217.2\_work\_temp\1729.aic
SetOutputLocation -path "\\sic.sedecal.com\artifacts\babelhub" -buildname ""
SetProductCode -langid 1033
SetDigitalCertificateFile -file "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\App Certification Kit\XXXXX.pfx"
SetVersion 1.0.2.38
Build

What could be the problem if the aip is generated by a different version than the one used to generate the installer? What could be the problem with this pipeline configuration?

With regards,

[Catalin]

Hello Juan,

I'm afraid that this is due to the fact that multiple versions are installed on the same machine.

The extension is developed to always pick the latest version of Advanced Installer from the machine - similarly to opening the AIP file manually, it would be opened in the latest version.

Best regards,
Catalin

[Catalin]

Hello Juan,

This is a followup to my previous reply.

I have discussed with our dev team and have added this on our TODO list of improvements - basically to update the extension to give the possibility to disable this behavior.

Best regards,
Catalin

[juan.01]

Hi Catalin,

Thanks for your help and adding this behavior to the devops extenssion.

In our company the system department use an automatic mdm to update applications and it's difficult to ensure thar all team members have in their Pcs the same Advanced Installer version and same version as server used to host devops agent.

I wanted to know if this sceneario can cause some problems if for example we have an aip saved with version V 20.6 and in server is installed the V 21.XX

With regards,

[Catalin]

Hello Juan,

You are always welcome!

I wanted to know if this sceneario can cause some problems if for example we have an aip saved with version V 20.6 and in server is installed the V 21.XX

The only problem that would pose is that the AIP file can not be edited in version 20.6 after modifying in with version 21.x - backward compatibility is really hard in our case as we can add more features and also modify the behavior for some others.

When doing that, Advanced Installer will create, by default, a backup copy of the 20.6 version if it detects that you try to modify it in a later version, but the modified version will not have the option to be opened in version 20.6.

Best regards,
Catalin