[wix-users] Using user's home directory as working directory (a.k.a startup directory) for shortcuts

[Herman van Drie]

Yapp,

I imagine shortcuts are created in user's profile Start Menu?
I actually don't understand why you cannot retrieve user's home directory from the application. Very dangerous to have a static user home directory as you cannot have an environment variable for a working directory in a shortcut to my knowledge. So, I wouldn't even try it to make it a static working directory in a shortcut. Very uncommon approach, only asking for more issues.

Regards,

Herman

-----Original Message-----
From: wix-users <wix-users-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> On Behalf Of Clifford Yapp via wix-users
Sent: dinsdag 5 januari 2021 16:21
To: wix-users at lists.wixtoolset.org
Cc: Clifford Yapp <cliffyapp at gmail.com>
Subject: [wix-users] Using user's home directory as working directory (a.k.a startup directory) for shortcuts

Hi!  I'm trying to create a WiX installer for a project using CMake, and I'm hitting a rather thorny problem.

For a number of reasons, we would prefer our user facing GUI applications being launched from shortcuts to start with a working directory equivalent to the user's home directory.  The NSIS installer allows this, but thus far I have not figured out how to do it with WiX.

The closest I have found so far is the work on Powershell's installer (
https://discourse.cmake.org/t/cpack-wix-setting-working-directory-for-desktop-and-menu-shortcuts/1846)
but it looks like that was subsequently reverted as not working.

Is there a standard way in WiX to set the working directory of shortcuts to the user's home directory?  CMake in principle offers a mechanism to patch or augment WiX logic, but so far I've not even been able to identify a working solution to try to integrate.

Thanks for any assistance,
CY

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