RabbitMQ NSIS setup in WiX Burn - uninstall issue

[Mathias Gammer]

Hello everyone,

We currently work on a Project in which we use RabbitMQ and try to deliver it within our WiX Bootstrapper (Wix Burn).

Installation work fine, but when the uninstall is executed, RabbitMQ is uninstalled and immediately reinstalled again. I think it's because

NSIS installer creates an uninstall.exe during install. Sadly, this uninstall.exe can not be called within WiX Burn, only the RabbitMQ setup can be called.

For the moment i'm forced to install RabbitMQ as permanent on the system, which does not satisfy our requirements.

WiX Burn works like a charm with MSIs, but they show a different behavior compared to NSIS setups.

1. Is there a way to uninstall RabbitMQ from a WiX Bootstrapper without reinstalling it immediately? Maybe a command line parameter?

2. Does someone know a way how to use the RabbitMQ uninstall.exe from within WiX Burn?

3. Is it possible to change the RabbitMQ NSIS installer behavior to not trigger a installation when RabbitMQ is already installed?

4. Are there any plans to move to an MSI based setup?

Best Regards,

Mathias

[Luke Bakken]

Hi Mathias,

What exact commands are you running to try to un-install RabbitMQ from WiX?

 

4. Are there any plans to move to an MSI based setup?

I have discussed this is the past with the team but more important issues always have priority. If people were willing to pay for a different install technology on Windows it would increase the likelihood of it happening.

Thanks,

Luke

----

Senior Member of Technical Staff

VMware / RabbitMQ 

[Mathias Gammer]

Hi Luke,

What exact commands are you running to try to un-install RabbitMQ from WiX?

 

Currently i just use /S as command for silent install. But as i said, both times the NSIS setup is called exactly the same and installs both times.

Thanks,

Mathias

 

[Luke Bakken]

Hello,

OK, so that's how you are installing RabbitMQ, what have you tried to un-install it via WiX? I'm very surprised you can't run uninstall.exe. Have you tried that? Do you get errors?

Thanks -

Luke

[Mathias Gammer]

Hi,

OK, so that's how you are installing RabbitMQ, what have you tried to un-install it via WiX? I'm very surprised you can't run uninstall.exe. Have you tried that? Do you get errors?

Thats how i install and uninstall RabbitMQ. See InstallCommand and UninstallCommand.

<ExePackage Id="RabbitMQ" SourceFile="$(var.BinDir)\rabbitmq-server.exe" DetectCondition='RabbitMQServiceName AND RabbitMQInstalledVersion >= "3.7.6"' After="Erlang" InstallCommand="/S" UninstallCommand="/S" PerMachine="yes" DisplayName="RabbitMQ Server"> 

WiX does not have a ExePackage-Tag to point to the uninstall.exe for uninstallation. The only file to work with it the SourceFile which is the NSIS Setup itself and i can't trigger an uninstall only with the NSIS Setup.

If i run the uninstall.exe manually or use the Windows Add or Remove Programs Dialog to uninstall RabbitMQ everything works fine.

[Luke Bakken]

Hi Mathias,

I took some time to read through the results of this search - https://www.google.com/search?q=wix+uninstall+NSIS

Apparently some users have had success with a custom action to run the uninstall.exe program when appropriate.

Another option (I think) is to set the package to permanent and add steps to remove the windows service and delete the RabbitMQ files yourself. The Windows service can be removed by running these command -

sbin\rabbitmq-service.bat stop

sbin\rabbitmq-service.bat remove

There may be a registry key to delete here - HKLM\Microsoft\windows\currentversion\uninstall

Thanks,

Luke