Does Advanced Installer Patch allowing the adding of files?

[cminorm]

I'm currently using version 10.3 to create a patch. Everything works fine if I only update files, but when I add a file, I get sequence errors. If I try to apply the patch that has the sequence errors I get an error that says "the file cannot be found in cabinet file". Following instructions from other threads I replaced those files that could not be found and that causes the patch to do nothing.

I've been working through this issue for over a week now and our deliverables are now getting affected.

I've looked at the MS site concerning patches and it says I can add files, does Advanced installer support adding files? If it can, what am I doing wrong?

[Eusebiu]

Hi,

I'm not sure why you encounter this behavior, but adding files in patch is supported by Advanced Installer. Are you sure that any patch rule is not broken in your packages?

If so, can you please send us the three .AIPs (the old version project, the new version project and patch project file) and a verbose log of the patch installation to support at advancedinstaller dot com so we can investigate them?

Best regards,
Eusebiu

[cminorm]

Eusebiu,

I sent all the files you asked for. I hope you can determine why my patch does not allow the adding of files.

Thanks,

Norm

[Eusebiu]

Hi Norm,

I looked over you projects and indeed, it seems that it is a file sequence problem caused by an Advanced Installer limitation when the "One CAB archive per feature" option is selected in the Media page.

If this option is selected, for each feature will be assigned a sequence range. For example, if "Feature1" contains 50 files, in Table Editor page, "File" table its file sequence range will be from 1 to 50, if "Feature2" has 10 files, its file sequence range will be from 51 to 60. In this case if a file is added to "Feature1" its sequence number will be 51 and the sequence range for "Feature2" will be modified (from 52 to 61).

One of the patch rules is "Do not change the order of files in a cabinet" and so, this rule is broken. We plan to fix this in a future version of Advanced Installer.

As a workaround, you can find which feature is the last in sequence in your project (in the projects you sent to me I found that this is "PB3Help"), then in the Files and Folders page select it from the toolbar as the current feature before adding any file. This way the files that you will add from now on, will be added in this feature and will be added last in sequence.

Let us know if this helped.

Best regards,
Eusebiu

[cminorm]

Hi Eusebiu,

The files I send you were for the server side installation of our product. When I changed the CAB option to one CAB file for all installation files, that took care of this issue.

The client side installation files still appear to have a sequence file issue, but it is limited to the Merge Modules. Is the merge module issue related to the "One CAB archive per feature" issue?

As a work around, I'll just send this upgrade out the door as an update instead of a patch and set the CAB file accordingly so it will be ready for a patch next time.

Norm

[Eusebiu]

Hi Norm,

Indeed, when the package contains Merge Modules, a similar behavior is encountered, but unfortunately we do not have any workaround for this.

Best regards,
Eusebiu

[ehardin]

The customer who started this thread was using AI ver. 10. I am using ver 8 with the exact same problem. I have worked the original target install and the modified upgraded packages ever possible way I can think of and I always get the same errors when building the Patch exe
Warning: Sequence changed. Sequence of file F_CENTRAL_mfc120_x86.... with a bunch of additional errors all pointing to Merge Module files.

You say there was no work-around when you were in version 10 and from what I have found this same behavior was in version 12. Have any recent versions fixed this problem or am I just plain out of luck because my application requires Merge Modules?

[Eusebiu]

Hi,

I'm afraid that this is a patch limitation and it was not fixed in the recent versions. Any change in files' sequence is not allowed in a patch.

Best regards,
Eusebiu

[ehardin]

I was able to work around the problem.
Since the merge modules I was using were for C++ CRT and C++ MFC I took them out of Merge Modules and put instead the C++ Redistributable ( in my case vcredist_vs2013_120_x86.exe) as a Prerequisite and used the Registry value of
HKCR\Installer\Dependencies\Microsoft.VS.VC_RuntimeMinimumVSU_x86,v12\Version
as the Install condition.
With that I was able to add new files to the patch without the errors I was getting when using Merge Modules.

Ed

[Eusebiu]

Hi,

I'm glad you managed to work around the problem. Thank you for sharing the solution with us.

Best regards,
Eusebiu

[Dan]

Hello,

This was fixed in version 14.4 of Advanced Installer released on October 26st, 2017.

Best regards,
Dan