Apple’s Safari browser is now available in public beta on Windows. A little spelunking shows that it uses Windows Installer packages and that they’re built with WiX. Sadly, they didn’t use WixUI.<g>
On a more serious-but-sad note, the packages have ICE validation errors (other than the typical ones), contain VBScript custom actions, and the main Safari package uses a custom action to install the Apple Software Updater package (instead of using a chainer). Already there’s a forum report of a 2738 error with the VBScript CA. And I guess the only way to report bugs is via forum posts…? It’s not clear. The “Report Bugs to Apple” command on the Help menu seems focused on rendering problems. Too bad. After all, Setup Development Is Just Development.
Posted in
WiX at June 11th, 2007.
5 Comments.
One of these things is not like the other…
Posted in Uncategorized at June 10th, 2007.
No Comments.
As everyone knows, script custom actions are inherently evil. A security addition to Windows Installer 4.0 in Windows Vista means that script CAs are even more likely to fail; see Heath’s blog entry on the issue and Aaron’s follow-up.
But did you know that script CAs, evil that they are, nonetheless ship in Orca, MsiVal2, and even the WiX toolset? Shocking but true. The Internal Consistency Evaluators (ICEs) are implemented as custom actions in .cub files that are MSI databases with a vastly different schema you’re used to seeing. A couple of ICEs are written in VBScript so a misregistered VBScript engine will cause those ICEs to fail. As WiX v3 runs validation by default during linking (and on-demand using the Smoke tool), failed ICEs fail your setup build.
Of 98 ICEs in the version of Darice.cub in the Windows Vista SDK, only four are written in VBScript — yet that’s all it takes to fail your build.
If you run into the problem, check out the workaround Aaron offers before you take the drastic step of disabling validation.
Posted in
Windows Installer at June 7th, 2007.
9 Comments.
