ExePackage is being rolled back even when it was not installed

[icnocop]

Bugs

• Which version of WiX are you building with? 4.0.0-rc.4

• Which version of Visual Studio are you building with (if any)? Visual Studio 2022 17.5.3

• Which version of the WiX Toolset Visual Studio Extension are you building with (if any)? N/A

• Which version of .NET are you building with? .net 6.0

• If the problem occurs when installing your packages built with WiX, what is the version of Windows the package is running on? Windows Server 2022 Standard 21H2

• Describe the problem and the steps to reproduce it.

If an ExePackage installation fails, the bundle will still try to rollback the ExePackage by running UninstallArguments. However, since the installation fails, there's nothing to rollback.

For example, if the ExePackage has a UI and the user cancels the ExePackage from installing, the bundle will start to perform a rollback. As part of the rollback, the ExePackage will be run again with UninstallArguments. If the ExePackage displays its UI again, the user has to now cancel/close the ExePackage again.

<Wix xmlns="http://wixtoolset.org/schemas/v4/wxs"
     xmlns:bal="http://wixtoolset.org/schemas/v4/wxs/bal"
     xmlns:util="http://wixtoolset.org/schemas/v4/wxs/util">

    <Bundle
        Name="Name"
        Version="1.0.0.0"
        Manufacturer="Manufacturer"
        UpgradeCode="828AA222-7292-412E-A266-A26FAD74C490">
        <BootstrapperApplication>
            <bal:WixStandardBootstrapperApplication
                Theme="hyperlinkSidebarLicense"
                LicenseUrl=""
                SuppressOptionsUI="yes"
                ShowVersion="yes" />
        </BootstrapperApplication>

        <util:ProductSearch
            UpgradeCode="0808A4DE-4BDA-4CBA-B4DF-D0397E800952}
            Variable="ExePackage1Installed" />

        <Chain>

            <ExePackage
                Id="ExePackage1"
                DisplayName="DisplayName"
                Vital="yes"
                Permanent="no"
                InstallCondition="(VersionNT64)"
                DetectCondition="(VersionNT64) AND (ExePackage1Installed >= v1.0.0.0)"
                SourceFile="Setup.exe"
                Compressed="yes"
                InstallArguments="/i"
                RepairArguments="/e"
                UninstallArguments="/x"
                PerMachine="yes" />

        </Chain>
    </Bundle>
</Wix>

• Describe the behavior you expected and how it differed from the actual behavior.

I did not expect the ExePackage to rollback because the ExePackage was not installed.

For example, the ExePackage may also have its own rollback mechanism.

Maybe the DetectCondition should be re-evaluated to determine if the ExePackage was successfully installed or not. For example, if the ExePackage returned an exit code which indicates an install failure and DetectCondition re-evaluates to false, then a rollback should not be performed.

Another option could be to dd a DisableRollback attribute to the ExePackage which can be set to yes for example which indicates to not rollback the ExePackage in case of a failure.

Thank you.

[rseanhall]

This was the behavior requested in https://github.com/wixtoolset/issues/issues/5950. I believe the correct way to address this is to change the ExePackage so it does not require user interaction when uninstalling.

Re-evaluating the DetectCondition would require going through the whole Detect cycle. We thought that doing that during Apply was not the right thing to do.

Permanent packages are never rolled back. I don't see us adding any other way to preventing rollback. I guess we could add the ability to disable rollback on a package only in this specific case when its failure caused the bundle to rollback but I don't know if that's a good idea.

[barnson]

We should not optimize for cases that involve user interactivity in the middle of a chain (execution or rollback).

[barnson]

This is the WiX v4 behavior. We could discuss changing that behavior in WiX v5 but as Sean points out, it's problematic.