[wix-devs] Issue 5371

[Ron Martin]

Sean,

After a few false starts, I'm finally where I hoped to be a month ago. I 
haven't
done much with VM's is the past. In particular, I've never set one up. 
The licensing
always seemed heavy handed. One place I worked as a contractor, VM's 
were heavily
used. I know that the company did not pay for licenses for the VM's they 
ran. They
just reinstalled the operating systems when the grace periods ran out.

I'll check out the burn tests to see if I understand them and how to set 
up the
required environments. What assumptions does Wix make about the pre-
existence of a VM during a build or when the special tests are run? I 
see the output
from some end-to-end tests when I build. Are these tests using a VM?

Creating msi files during the Wix build and keeping them around for later
manually initiated tests to be run in a VM environment seems straightforward
as long as there is a plan for where to put these files. Are your 
end-to-end tests
built in C++ or C#?

In the direct tests, would you probe the msi database using the msi API 
or would
you use instrumented net user commands? I suspect that parsing the output of
a net user command is more trouble than it's worth.

I'll consider porting some or all of the other v3 end-to-end tests when 
I figure out
how hard it will be.

Thanks for you help, Sean.

Ron

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On 4/28/2022 2:55 PM, Sean Hall via wix-devs wrote:
> We already have the concept of end-to-end tests that are only intended to
> be run inside of a VM, see wix4\src\test\burn. Those are automated tests
> that must be run elevated, and require special commands to run so that they
> aren't run as part of the normal build. Those tests were ported from wix3
> from wix3\test\src\WixTests\Burn (and wix3\test\data\Burn).
>
> wix3 also had MSI end-to-end tests in wix3\test\src\WixTests\Extensions
> (and wix3\test\data\Extensions). It would be great if someone could port
> those tests to wix4, probably to wix4\src\test\msi. When I ported the burn
> tests, I changed how they worked so that the normal build takes care of
> building all of the required files and the tests only have to run them.
> Hopefully I took care of all the infrastructure needed by those Extensions
> tests and it's straightforward to port those MSI tests or to write new
> ones. It looks like there were already some util:User tests, I can look
> into porting those first if you want.
>
> On Thu, Apr 28, 2022 at 1:04 PM Ron Martin via wix-devs <
> wix-devs at lists.wixtoolset.org> wrote:
>
>> I'd like to discuss Issue 5371. I worked on this issue nearly a year
>> ago, but it was never merged. I've recently brought it up to date so
>> that it is once again mergeable.
>> There are, however, still a couple of open issues:
>> 1) I need to create a simple test that demonstrates that the msi is
>> created or modified with the proper user name, password, and comment
>> without executing the msi. This can always be run as part of the Wix
>> installation.
>> 2) An optional test can perform more aggressive testing. I don't like my
>> current design, which creates a desktop shortcut when it is run. I'd
>> like to have a more Wix-centric location in which to place an msi file
>> that creates or modifies the test user account when installed and
>> removes it when uninstalled.
>> 3) Where should the optional test be installed and how should it be
>> accessed?
>> 4) Where should the msi generated by this msi be placed?
>> 5) Should this msi be installed and uninstalled manually, with the user
>> verifying the the user account creation, modification, and deletion, or
>> should all of this be automated?
>> 6) If manual, should prompting be supplied? By whom? When?
>> 7) If automated, how should elevation be handled?
>> 8) Should extra steps be taken to minimize the increase in Wix's attack
>> surface created by this test.
>> 9) The thought that Wix can be used to create privileged accounts
>> through a silent install or as a trojan horse gives me nightmares.
>>
>> Ron
>> ____________________________________________________________________
>> WiX Toolset Developer Mailing List provided by FireGiant
>> http://www.firegiant.com/
>>
> ____________________________________________________________________
> WiX Toolset Developer Mailing List provided by FireGiant http://www.firegiant.com/