Question

I have a WiX installer which needs to install new bits for Interop.FOOBARLib.DLL to the GAC. The problem is that the version number is the same as the old version and the new bits do not get written the GAC on an upgrade. We execute the RemoveExistingProducts action after the InstallFinalize action.

We cannot move the RemoveExistingProducts action to earlier in the install.

The foobar.dll component is not my component so I cannot increment the type library version (which would cause the version of the interop to increment and all these problems go away).

Is there a way to FORCE the file to be upgraded in the GAC even if the version is the same? I want behavior similar to “gacutil.exe /f”.

The component looks like:

<Component Id="Interop.FOOBARLib.dll" Guid="{4E0C173E-34DF-4249-A3A6-5530047FA65B}" >
    <File Id="Interop. FOOBARLib.dll" Name="Interop.FOOBARLib.dll" KeyPath="yes" Assembly=".net"/>
</Component>

Answer 1

You can regenerate the interop assembly yourself and force it to get a higher version like this:

tlbimp /asmversion:1.2.3 /out:Interop.FOOBARLib.DLL foobar.dll