This is just a reminder and warning about the rare but infuriating problem where the uninstall events in a Visual Studio Setup Project custom action (CA) will not run. While experimenting with a simple Setup Project to test some CA code I was changing various project properties and various haphazard ways and installing and uninstalling over and over many times. At some point, the CA's uninstall events and method overrides stopped running. Not matter what properties I changed, I could not get the uninstall events to ever run again. I searched the web and found dozens of questions from people who had suffered a similar problem. All of the advice I found was either irrelevant or made no difference.
I remember this problem happened to me many years ago, and I think after hours of suffering I gave up and either restored the original project or recreated it.
This time, as a stubborn challenge, I spent hours trying to get the project working correctly again, but msiexec verbose logs revealed nothing useful and comparisons of the vdproj files was not possible because their structure changes unpredictably each time it's altered and saved. I simply could not get the CA uninstall events to run again and I could not figure out what had corrupted them.
I created a brand new Setup Project, set the properties and custom action code back the way they were in the original project, and it all worked perfectly.
Overall, I guess the lesson is to be careful with Setup Projects, back them up and remember what you change.
I have a love-hate relationship with Setup Projects. Once you get a feel for them and find where they've hidden the various common settings you need, a familiar friendly MSI installer can be created very easily. However, as soon as you find you are pushing them too hard, then it's time to switch over to something like WiX and be prepared to wade into a morass of XML. To paraphrase the old adage: WiX gives you complete control, but you have to control everything.
16-Mar-2015
P.S. Setup Project (*.vdproj file) support was withdraw with the release of Visual Studio 2010, but after sustained protest they were made available again in 2013 as an add-in.
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