How to build multi-lingual _un_installs?

[Christoph Schneegans]

Hello!

I've created a multi-lingual setup, which works very well. However, when I remove the program via the control panel, no language selection dialog is displayed. In fact, the LANGUAGE variable is empty. According to the help file, this means that I'm running a non multi-lingual uninstall. That's a pity. How do I make uninstalls multi-lingual?

[MichaelNesmith]

Are you sure LANGUAGE is empty? The language selection dialog box will not be shown during maintenance, this behavior is as-designed - since the product has already been installed in the language chosen by the user.

[Christoph Schneegans]

I'm sure. In the first lines of my script, I log some of the relevant variables. This is the logfile for a first-time install:

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2007-01-25 09:51:53 - Setup started.
2007-01-25 09:51:53 - MAINTENANCE: FALSE
2007-01-25 09:51:53 - NEEDSUPGRADE: FALSE
2007-01-25 09:51:53 - LANGUAGE: German

This is the logfile for an uninstall:

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2007-01-25 10:29:35 - Setup started.
2007-01-25 10:29:35 - MAINTENANCE: TRUE
2007-01-25 10:29:35 - NEEDSUPGRADE: FALSE
2007-01-25 10:29:35 - LANGUAGE:

When my program has been installed, %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\\Application Data\\<GUID>\\my-project.lan contains a single line that identifies the languages selected, e.g.:

German

However, the maintenance dialog does _not_ display the localized strings from my translations.German. During first-time installs, the localized strings are used as expected. I then tried to set a fallback language:

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if Variable LANGUAGE Equals
  Set Variable LANGUAGE to English
end

This doesn't work either, LANGUAGE remains empty, and the strings from my translations.English are not used for uninstalls. It really seems that for some reason, my uninstall is not multi-lingual.

[Christoph Schneegans]

This is what I've found in the meantime:

LANGUAGE is empty when

· I use "Add or Remove programs" in the control panel and click "Change" or "Remove".
· I run %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\\Application Data\\<GUID>\\my-project.exe or my-project.msi.

In this case, my logfile looks as follows:

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2007-01-25 13:15:33 - Setup started.
2007-01-25 13:15:33 - MAINTENANCE: TRUE
2007-01-25 13:15:33 - NEEDSUPGRADE: FALSE
2007-01-25 13:15:33 - LANGUAGE:

LANGUAGE equals "German" (remember that this is the value in the my-project.lan file) when

· I run the same version of Release\\Web\\my-project.exe (Web-based EXE build) again which installed the program in the first place. Please note that no language selection dialog is displayed in this case, yet the proper translations.German is used.

In this case, my logfile looks as follows:

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2007-01-25 13:15:53 - Setup started.
2007-01-25 13:15:53 - MAINTENANCE: TRUE
2007-01-25 13:15:53 - NEEDSUPGRADE: FALSE
2007-01-25 13:15:53 - LANGUAGE: German

What seems curious to me is that my-project.exe does not honor the .lan file when it's in the same directory. One would expect exactly the opposite behavior.

I've run the "File Monitor" tool from Microsoft's Sysinternals Suite. When I run Release\\Web\\my-project.exe, the my-project.lan file is accessed a couple of times, as expected. When I use the control panel or %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\\Application Data\\<GUID>\\my-project.exe, however, this file is not accessed at all!

[MichaelNesmith]

Strange one, I cannot reproduce this. Are you changing the product name or title in the installation script? You can see for yourself with an empty project that this works fine. The only case I can think of why it might fail for you is if you are changing the default product name ($TITLE$) or something similar.

Try to create an empty project, just "dummy" localize it (export and then re-import right away), and add a MessageBox to display the value of $LANGUAGE$ in the script. See what happens!

If you can nail the issue, I will be able to escalate and get a resolution faster.

[Christoph Schneegans]

You are absolutely right. I created a new Default Project "my-project", and just added two lines of code,

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Set Variable TITLE to foobar

at the very beginning, and

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MessageBox: , LANGUAGE: $LANGUAGE$

in the "Perform Uninstallation" region, and the problems occured immediately.

I can workaround the problem when I copy "my-project.mtx" to "foobar.mtx", and make this copy a support file as well, so this seems very much connected to my previous post Compiler variable in title suppresses language selector.