SetDirectory not honored after WiX v4 upgrade?

[tristanlabelle]

Hello,

I'm porting the installer for the Swift programming language toolchain for Windows to WiX v4. I ran the converter from WiX v3 and the resulting installer doesn't seem to honor the <SetDirectory> that is supposed to set the default installation location anymore. The result is that the files get installed to C:\... instead of C:\Program Files\swift\.... What am I missing?

See platforms/Windows/runtime-amd64.wxs in: swiftlang/swift-installer-scripts@2a30cde

[robmen]

How does the verbose log file for the two versions differ? IIRC (off the top of my head), there was a fix to more correctly schedule SetDirectory that may cause your Condition to be evaluated differently.

PS: I could be missing something by the design of some of your directory trees looks overly complex. You don't need SetDirectory to install to ProgramFilesFolder. And there seems to be lots of duplicated code.

[robmen]

That is basically the solution, but it looks so weird. How about this instead?

<StandardDirectory Id='ProgramFiles64Folder'>
   <Directory Id='INSTALLDIR' Name='swift'>
       ...

Declarative is always better than procedural. SetDirectory is a tiny bit of procedural.

[tristanlabelle]

Ah! Thanks for your help! My previous solution also did not work, I was erroneously using a stale build.

That said, the <StandardDirectory> does not work for Id="WindowsVolume", which we use for other MSIs, as this is not a recognized enumerant. What would be the equivalent formulation? Do we have to use <SetDirectory> in that case?

[tristanlabelle]

I'm not sure if this is what I should be looking at, but comparing this array:

https://github.com/wixtoolset/wix4/blob/f5bda6af2abbcf7e4792d299b86bfcec713fc6c2/src/api/wix/WixToolset.Data/WindowsInstaller/WindowsInstallerStandard.cs#L367

and this reference:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/msi/property-reference#system-folder-properties

WindowsVolume is the only missing entry

[robmen]

WindowsVolume isn't a standard directory; it's a property (confusing as that is, see: #7233 and #7314). I would use SetProperty before CostInitialize since SetDirectory can force a recosting which can be slow.

[tristanlabelle]

Thank you! I got it to work using those links!