[wix-devs] 4822 - Delay ARP registration in Bundles until a non-permanent package is installed

[Rob Mensching]

> To me, the battle was already lost in (2) of your scenario where the bundle gets registered.

Is there a design that avoids losing the battle (without leaving the bundle in a location that won't get cleaned up)? Fundamentally the scenario is:

1. BA requires .NETFX
2. Burn uses mbapreq to install .NETFX
3. NETFX requires restart, user restarts
4. After restart, Burn starts up BA's managed code
5. User cancels BA without starting install
6. Nothing but NETFX is left on the machine as a result of Burn


> Is there a reason that the engine needs the command line parameter to clean up after Quit? I think it should always try to clean up, and maybe we need to add a parameter to Quit to opt out of that.

I don't quite follow. What do you mean exactly by clean-up?


> Now that you say it, I think we have been designing a "pre-req" section of the chain.

Yep. I just don't know that having an explicit PrereqChain really buys us anything.


-----Original Message-----
From: wix-devs <wix-devs-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> On Behalf Of Sean Hall via wix-devs
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2020 7:30 PM
To: WiX Toolset Developer Mailing List <wix-devs at lists.wixtoolset.org>
Cc: Sean Hall <r.sean.hall at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [wix-devs] 4822 - Delay ARP registration in Bundles until a non-permanent package is installed

To me, the battle was already lost in (2) of your scenario where the bundle gets registered. The user is going to see an ARP entry that they don't expect. That's why I'm much less concerned about the BA not cleaning up, it's the engine's fault of registering in the first place. I'm not against trying to help the BA clean up the bundle, I just think making that unexpected ARP entry less confusing is much more important.

Is there a reason that the engine needs the command line parameter to clean up after Quit? I think it should always try to clean up, and maybe we need to add a parameter to Quit to opt out of that.

Now that you say it, I think we have been designing a "pre-req" section of the chain. The only reason I can see to make it explicit would be if somebody really wanted a permanent package to be considered part of the "real" part of the bundle. I can't see us allowing non-permanent packages in the "pre-req" section of the chain. If there were a PrereqChain element, it would make more sense for the "InProgressRegistrationName" attribute to be specified there.

On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 3:59 AM Rob Mensching <rob at firegiant.com> wrote:

> > The reason I want "until first non-permanent package" is that it 
> > seems
> to be the best way to describe when a "real" part of the bundle has 
> been installed. If the bundle is uninstalling and it fails before all 
> non-permanent packages are uninstalled, then I don't think the 
> "InProgressRegistrationName" should ever be written to ARP during that 
> Apply execution.
>
> Yeah. Seems reasonable. We're really getting to a point of having a 
> "pre-req" section of the chain in Burn. I'm not sure it's worth 
> explicitly specifying in the .wxs but maybe the BurnBackend should 
> automatically tag early permanent packages as "pre-reqs" to help the 
> engine? I don't know just ideas.
>
> > Points 1 and 2 in the WIP should ensure that if the BA does
> Detect/Plan/Apply then the engine does the right thing. So the only 
> problem is if the BA doesn't successfully start Apply. That means that 
> any functionality we add would have to happen when they call the 
> engine's Quit method, and it probably would need a new command line 
> parameter since we shouldn't rely on the BA calling Detect. That 
> should be possible to implement but might be tricky since the BA has 
> effectively shutdown and wouldn't be expecting any more messages.
>
> Yes. This is exactly what I was pointing out and I 100% agree with 
> everything you said. It isn't that hard to get into this situation:
>
> 1. Launch bundle that requires NETFX installed and restarted 2. 
> Install NETFX, bundle will be registered, restart 3. Resume 
> installation, bundle shows its install UI for first time 4. User 
> cancels without proceeding through the install UI 5. The bundle is 
> still registered but the user thinks they "cancelled the install" 
> before even clicking the Install button (they only accepted the "NETFX 
> install", not the "product's install")
>
> The work around *is* easy, uninstall the "leftover" product. The 
> problem is the perception of the user that thinks the product never 
> should have been there (installing NETFX isn't installing the 
> product). I agree the only solution I've seen is for Burn to clean up 
> the cached bundle and registration during Quit() without talking to the BA.
>
> My primary concern remains that the "InProgressRegistrationName" 
> solution does not address this most problematic scenario.
>
>
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