FAILURE TO UPDATE VIA COMMAND LINE AFTER VERSION 20.7.1

[Henrique Mesquita]

Good morning,

Before reporting the incident, I would like to describe how our application currently operates:

We have a MAIN application that installs other applications configured under the "Prerequisites" tab, installed via command line with necessary properties. Upon installation, the folder architecture is as follows:



Example command line for installing one of the prerequisites:

/exenoui /qn APPDIR="[APPDIR]\PreRequisiteName" WORKFOLDER="[WORKFOLDER]\PreRequisiteName" TENANTNAME="[TENANTNAME]" ORGANIZATIONNAME="[ORGANIZATIONNAME]" PROXYADDRESS="[PROXYADDRESS]" PROXYPORT=[PROXYPORT] ENABLEPROXY=[ENABLEPROXY] AUTHPROXY=[AUTHPROXY] PROXYUSER=[PROXYUSERNAMECRIPTO] PROXYPASSWORD=[PROXYPASSWORDCRIPTO] ENABLEGATEWAY=[ENABLEGATEWAY] GATEWAYADDRESS=[GATEWAYADDRESS] GATEWAYPORT=[GATEWAYPORT]

For further details on how we use this, here is a link: viewtopic.php?t=52086 to a previous topic we created (please disregard the incident reported in that topic and focus only on the explanation of how our application works).

Incident:

We upgraded Advanced Installer from version v20.7.1 to v21.8.2 and encountered the following issue:

When performing an update via command line, the properties passed in the "Prerequisites" tab are not transferred at runtime. Consequently, only the MAIN application is installed without the prerequisites.

Below is a log screenshot from an update performed using an installer generated in version 21.8.2 and executed via command line:



An important point is that this issue occurs only when the update is done via command line. Using the same package via the UI, the update succeeds in installing both the main application and its prerequisites.

With the installer generated in version 20.7.1, the command line update works correctly. Reviewing the log at the same point as before, it's evident that the property value is correctly passed:



Command line executed for update:

APP_1.0.0.exe /quiet

We've noticed some changes in the prerequisites tab interface. We've researched and made several adjustments, but none have been successful. Reverting to version 20.7.1 or earlier resolves the issue.

Could you assist us with this adjustment? Since the Advanced Installer interface has changed, there might be another configuration we haven't found, or perhaps this is indeed a bug.

Thanks.

[Eusebiu]

Hi,

Indeed, the "Prerequisite" support was redesigned starting with version 20.9 of Advanced Installer which added some benefits, but also came with this limitation. Namely, when the main package is EXE and it is installed with basic UI or in silent mode, the properties set in the command line field are not sent to the post-install prerequisite (prerequisite added after the main package).

We've already reported this issue to the development team so they will look into this and try to find a solution for a future version of Advanced Installer.

In the meantime, you can overcome this problem by creating an MSI main package instead of EXE or by sticking to an old version of Advanced Installer until a fix is implemented.

Best regards,
Eusebiu

[Henrique Mesquita]

Good afternoon,

Thank you for your response.

We conducted tests by installing the prerequisites before the main package, and the scenario remained the same, with no values in the properties.

Do you have an estimate for when the incident will be fixed/released? We need to use some functions that are available in the new versions but we are stuck on 20.7.1.
We cannot use the main package as MSI because we require the language selection screen.

Thank you again.

Best regards,
Henrique Mesquita

[Eusebiu]

Hi Henrique,

We conducted tests by installing the prerequisites before the main package, and the scenario remained the same, with no values in the properties.

In this case, the main package has not yet been executed and none of its custom properties can be sent to the prerequisite.

Do you have an estimate for when the incident will be fixed/released? We need to use some functions that are available in the new versions but we are stuck on 20.7.1.

I'm afraid that I cannot say for sure when this improvement will be available, neither if we will be able to find a solution, but we will update this thread when we will have a resolution.

Best regards,
Eusebiu

[Eusebiu]

Hello,

This improvement has been included in version 22.0 of Advanced Installer.

Best regards,
Eusebiu

[Eusebiu]

Hi Henrique,

I've managed to reproduce the issue on your test resources and to find its cause.

As I've mentioned on the other thread, if the main package is EXE, the prerequisites are now installed by the EXE Bootstrapper instead of the MSI package. For this, we've implemented a custom action that gets the installer properties from the main MSI and passes them to the EXE Bootstrapper which will lately pass them to the prerequisite.

The problem is that this custom action is only able to get the properties that are initialized to a default value in the "Properties" page (the properties that are available in the "Property" table).

I've already talked to the developer that implemented this feature about adding an improvement to this so that even the properties that are added during the package installation can be passed to the EXE Bootstrapper. He agreed to that, but he informed me that this is not an easy task and it may not be available very soon. In any case, we will update this thread when it will be available.

In the meantime, you can get this to work by going in the "Properties" page and setting a default value for the properties that you want to send to the prerequisites. You can check the "Show properties with empty values" option to show the properties that are used in another pages of the project.

There are also reserved properties that cannot be added in the "Properties" page (e.g. APPDIR) and for those, you need to add other properties in that page (e.g. COPY_APPDIR) that are set to a default value, then copy the main properties' values to them during the installation through the "Set installer property" custom action.

Let me know if you have other questions.

Best regards,
Eusebiu

[Henrique Mesquita]

Good morning, Eusebiu

We have made the requested adjustments: a new property, "APPDIRCLONE", was created in the properties tab:



A custom action was added to set the value of "APPDIR" to the new property "APPDIRCLONE"



The command line for the prerequisites was modified to accept the new property, APPDIRCLONE, in addition to passing the prerequisites to be executed after the installation of the main application



When performing the installation silently (/quiet), we can see in the logs that the value transfer from the APPDIR property to APPDIRCLONE is occurring correctly, as shown in the image below:



However, during the installation of the prerequisites, the property "APPDIRCLONE" still holds its old value, "Your value", preventing the installation from proceeding:



We moved the custom action to several stages of the installation process in an attempt to find a working configuration, but without success.

Could you assist us with this issue?

Advanced Installer v22.2

Thank you in advance.

[Eusebiu]

Hi Henrique,

Your configuration seems correct, indeed, and the property's value should be passed correctly. Can you send me your project so I can investigate it and try to find the issue?

Best regards,
Eusebiu