You may be able to use the MSI logging if you want to trace data into the MSI log file. Another cheap trick I've used is to set interestingly named properties to whatever I want to see the values of. The setting of these properties and values is logged.
Phil Wilson
-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Painter [mailto:***@deploymentengineering.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2010 5:13 PM
To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.
Subject: Re: [WiX-users] How to debug CustomAction DLL
I think I recall you sometimes have to reboot and/or restart the Msiexec service
after setting MsiBreak because the Service Control Manager doesn't get the env
update. I haven't used it in a long time so I could be wrong. on the C#/DTF
side I tend to use MessageBox during intitial development and almost never need
to debug a custom action later in it's life cycle.
----- Original Message ----
From: Tony Juricic <***@TradeStation.com>
To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.
<wix-***@lists.sourceforge.net>
Sent: Tue, August 24, 2010 5:00:47 PM
Subject: Re: [WiX-users] How to debug CustomAction DLL
Good ole' MessageBox is the most reliable way to debug C/C++ CAs that I found.
You may be able to set the breakpoint after the MessageBox and then attach to
the running msiexec process.
-----Original Message-----
From: little.forest [mailto:***@ymail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2010 5:12 PM
To: wix-***@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: [WiX-users] How to debug CustomAction DLL
Dear Wix Experts:
We have a CustomAction DLL written in C. How to debug it?
There are a few posts about it:
Post1:
http://www.davidmoore.info/2010/06/28/how-to-debug-a-windows-installer-custom-action/
Post2: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2005/06/17/430320.aspx
Post3: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa368264(VS.85).aspx
I tried it in Windows 7. I did set MsiBreak, but that famous "message box" never
showed up. So I tried it in XP, the "message box" showed up. It says "To debug
your custom action, attach your debugger to process 5632(0x1600) and press OK".
I opened Windbg.
Post1 says "attach the process", Post2 says "Open Executable...". I tried both,
neither works for me. In both cases, I got "*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be
found. Defaulted to export symbols for C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntdll.dll -
ntdll!DbgBreakPoint: 7c90120e cc int 3" in Windbg.
Questions:
1. What's the problem here?
2. Should I attach process? Or should I "Open Executable..."?
3. If I should attach process, why it doesn't work?
4. If I should "Open Executable...", what the "File name" and "Arguments" fields
should be? For example, the "File name" should be "C:\Temp\MyApp.msi" or
"C:\Windows\system32\msiexec.exe"? How about arguments? Should it be "/i
C:\Temp\MyApp.msi"?
5. Why it doesn't work in Windows 7?
If you even debug DLL CustomAction, pls let me know.
Thanks!
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