How to create a custom dialog in WiX for user input

installationwix

I'm using WiX to create an installer for a windows service. It's desirable that the name of service that gets installed and displayed in Services is configurable at install time.

For example, this is what I'm thinking (wix xml snip):

<ServiceInstall 
    Id="MyServiceInstaller" 
    Name="NAME_PASSED_FROM_DIALOG" 
    Type="ownProcess" 
    Start="auto" 
    ErrorControl="normal" 
    Description="My Service" 
    Account="localsystem"/> 

<ServiceControl
    Id="StartMyServiceInstaller" 
    Name="NAME_PASSED_FROM_DIALOG" 
    Start="install"
    Wait="no" />

<ServiceControl
    Id="StopMyServiceInstaller" 
    Name="NAME_PASSED_FROM_DIALOG" 
    Remove="uninstall"
    Stop="both"
    Wait="yes" />

NAME_PASSED_FROM_DIALOG is something I would like to hook up to a custom dialog that gets created and gets displayed to the person installing the service so they can set/modify the service name. I think this is very similar to the WIXUI_INSTALLDIR property that gets set and passed to the WixUI_InstallDir Dialog Set.

My question is:

How do I create a custom UI dialog that can accept user input which gets passed into runtime of the installer?

Best Answer

Have fun with UI!

Edit: The original link to answer doesn't exist anymore. FireGiant (the maintainers of Wix) some examples for part of this process, but it's doesn't completely answer this question. There is one further tutorial (UPDATE Aug.2018: Link resurrected from Wayback Machine) that does go most of the way to answer this question.

A high level overview of what will be happening is:

Create a property
Have the UI control set this property
The name attribute on the service will reference the property, ie [ServiceNameProperty].

However this is complex, and the way that is suggested to create a new UI dialog, is to take an existing dialog, make a clone of it, and then edit with new text, controls and use it to populate the property.

Related Solutions

Stopping display of custom dialog boxes in WiX uninstall

The solution to your question is to condition the custom action with the condition (Not REMOVE="ALL"). This will make the action run on fresh install and maintenance install, but not on uninstall. If you don't need to run on maintenance install, but only on a fresh install you can set the condition to be: (Not Installed AND Not(REMOVE="ALL")). Full list of MSI properties and brief descriptions here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa370905(VS.85).aspx.

The sequencing and custom action logic in MSI files is VERY complicated. It really pays off to avoid custom actions whenever you can.

There is more - all MSI files have built-in support for silent installation. This means that the entire GUI sequence can be skipped, and the MSI file installed without user interaction. This is a crucial feature for corporate deployment via SMS / SCCM or other deployment mechanisms. Showing a custom dialog box when the setup is run in silent mode is a violation of this basic MSI feature. You can work around this by properly conditioning the display of the dialog based on the property UILevel: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa372096(VS.85).aspx. Just to keep things interesting and confusing Microsoft has defined 4 levels of GUI during an installation ranging from completely silent, through various options such as progress bar only etc... See the link for details.

I could add a lot of details here about MSI sequences, conditions, custom actions and similar, but it wouldn't answer your question. Please add any follow-up questions.

WiX MSI install Windows service without starting it

Do not use the ServiceControl element as it is what will start and stop services. By calling it, you are asking the installer to do something with a service. You only need to call ServiceInstall to create a service. As Stefan Wanitzek suggested, you should use demand in the Start attribute of your ServiceInstall. This is to make your service not start running if the user reboots the computer. If your installer is also installing the .exe as welladd the file with the install service. I would suggest to use the following taken from your code:

<Component Id="ServiceInstaller" Guid="3e412e3d-0339-325c-8633-f54ffaaa4921">
        <File Id="WindowsService.exe" 
         Name="WindowsService.exe" 
         KeyPath="yes"
         Source="Path to the EXE"/>
        <ServiceInstall Id="ReportingServiceInstaller"
                Type="ownProcess"
                Vital="yes"
                Name="WindowsService"                    
                DisplayName="WindowsService"
                Description="Wickedly awesome and amazing service."
                ErrorControl="ignore"
                Account="NT AUTHORITY\LocalService"
                Start="demand"
                Interactive="no" />
</Component>

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