WixToolset.DifxApp removed in v5 - alternatives?

[x86dev]

As WixToolset.DifxApp got deprecated in v4 and removed in v5, what are the recommended alternatives to install drivers now? Is v5 getting an adequate replacement for WixToolset.DifxApp so that users don't have to invent custom (action) solutions for each and every installer which is using v5?

[x86dev]

Any news here?

[robmen]

so that users don't have to invent custom (action) solutions for each and every installer which is using v5

Microsoft deprecated DifxApp, so why don't you contribute its replacement to the WiX Toolset?

[x86dev]

Before intending so, what is the actual take by the WIX team regarding this? Is there anything in the make already or at least something planned? An official statement besides "Microsoft has deprecated DifxApp" would help here.

[robmen]

I'm not aware of anyone starting to work on a replacement for DifxApp.

[computerquip-work]

Looking at MSDN, I'm not even sure they want drivers to be distributed in an MSI anymore. They're pretty clear in saying that they want drivers to be packaged "individually" and to submit it for distribution through Windows Update channels.

This is a very "corporate" solution to me and not even a practical one. Like imagine if nvidia only distributed their drivers through Windows update. We wouldn't see updates but twice a year at best because of all the non-sense that has to go into getting a driver updated through official channels.

As a footnote on MSDN, they say that applications using DIFx should consider switching to using pnputil.exe or DiInstallDriver and DiUninstallDriver.

So as far as I see it, ideally there would be some WIX extension implemented over those two functions and in the meantime, use a CustomAction with pnputil.exe.

EDIT: Something that totally escaped me during the thought process above is that pnputil.exe has no convenient way to uninstall a driver. You generally specify a .inf file of some sort which gets changed to oem<n>.inf where you don't know what <n> is. There's no way to know how to uninstall it ahead of time so it's very difficult to write declarative rules concerning driver uninstall unfortunately.

[computerquip-work]

I have notes that say this didn't work but that was a couple years ago now. Maybe I did something weird then... It seems to work on my VMs at least now.

[wmanning]

This link says it was introduced in Windows 10 1607.

Deleting a Driver Package from the Driver Store
...

• Starting in Windows 10, version 1607, from the command prompt, use pnputil /delete-driver <example.inf> /uninstall. For info on PnPUtil commands, see PnPUtil Command Syntax.
• Starting in Windows 10, version 1703, a device installation application can call DiUninstallDriverW.

[computerquip-work]

Yeah, delete-driver existed back then but I'm fairly sure you could only pass oem#.inf as described in the help and documentation:

[computerquip-work]

Yeah, okay, I'm not crazy, this doesn't work on Windows Server 2019 and maybe early versions of Windows Server 2022.

[robmen]

The next time someone asks, "Why haven't you provided a replacement for DifxApp?" please point them to this thread.

It's a non-trivial problem and very disappointing that Microsoft deprecated DifxApp.

[computerquip-work]

With wixv3 and v4 apparently having support dropped, I'm once again coming back to this god forsaken problem. If I were to hypothetically start work on something for this...

Is a generic solution possible here at all? What scenarios would I need to target to make everyone happy?

[robmen]

Start by creating the C functions to detect, install and uninstall PnP drivers. Take a look at the existing WiX custom action C code to see the style and how dutil.lib helps standardize the code.

Once you have those functions written and we know what inputs they take to do their work, we can build the MSI integration on top.

Those first three functions (detect, install, uninstall) require the specific driver domain knowledge that us setup developers don't have.