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wixwindows-installerinstallationwix3

Shortcuts and MSI updates

We have an installer for application that is compiled using WiX and each version is updated using a new setup package. The installer creates advertised shortcut in Start menu and users often copy this shortcut to desktop or other location. During an application update a major upgrade is performed and the old shortcuts are removed, which causes the ones copied by users to disappear. This causes a major annoyance to the users.

  • Is there a way to update advertised shortcuts when doing MSI major upgrade (ie. different product code)?
  • Or, is there a way to allow minor updates by just running the setup.msi file (without passing a REINSTALLMODE option on the command line)?
  • Or, is the only way to solve this problem to use non-advertised shortcuts?
Solution

  • Apparently there are only two solutions:

    • Use non-advertised shortcuts, which is what we eventually chose to do.
    • Use a setup bootstrapper that allows installing minor updates, ie. setting REINSTALLMODE=vomus when previous installation is detected. This should be achievable with dotNetInstaller (http://dotnetinstaller.codeplex.com/) or Burn (to be released with WiX 3.6).