Required file Uninstall.dat is missing

[larsen]

On updating from 0.47 to 0.48 I get the errror message shown in the first screenshot and after pressing ok the error message shown in the second screenshot.

Then the installation and deinstallation programs are started at the same time. I choose to uninstall first, of course. The progress bar flickers a little bit with the bar standing at approximately 50%. There is no real progress, but the details say that all files were deleted. Though, they all still exist.

Installation works fine, but at the end I can see that uninstall.dat gets deleted. Should this be the case?

    Installing in administrator mode (registry root will be HKLM)
    Adding Inkscape to SVG file context menu
    Finalizing installation
    Create shortcut: C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\All Users\Startmenü\Programme\Inkscape.lnk
    Rename: C:\DOKUME~1\larsen\LOKALE~1\Temp\nsy503.tmp\unlog.tmp->C:\Programme\Inkscape\Uninstall.dat
    Created uninstaller: C:\Programme\Inkscape\Uninstall.exe
    Creating MD5 checksums
    Delete file: C:\Programme\Inkscape\Uninstall.dat
    Completed

OS is Windows XP SP3 German

[jazzynico (jazzynico)]

Same error messages (in French), and 0.47 files are not uninstalled, but the new 0.48 install works fine.
The Uninstall.log file doesn't list all the installed files and uninstalling 0.48 leads to the same result as with 0.47: most installed files are not uninstalled.

But if I remove all the remaining 0.47 files before installing 0.48, everything works correctly (Uninstall.dat is also deleted, but it's probably not a problem) and I can then uninstall 0.48 without any issue.

Thus I'd say this bug is a 0.47 one which is now fixed in 0.48.

@Chris, why does the 0.48 install process create an incomplete uninstall log file? Since all the files are overwritten by the new install, we should have a correct log. I suggest that we post a notice in the download page so that users delete the old install folder completely. Is there anything else we can do?

[Chris Morgan (chris.morgan)]

The part about files not uninstalling properly is due to a certain bug in the 0.47 uninstaller. It's been fixed in 0.48, so for the next release it will work properly; it shouldn't cause any significant problems.

The message box seems to be a by-product of the very poor uninstallation script used; it's been hacked about something awful to get checksums working with it, and not done quite consistently. I keep telling myself that sometime I'll rewrite it all decently, but I haven't got to it yet.

Explanation of the situation: AdvUninstLog.nsh thinks it's dealing with Uninstall.dat. However, this file is then read at the end and checksums calculated and Uninstall.log written. Then, once Uninstall.log is finished being written, Uninstall.dat is deleted as not needed. Unfortunately, whoever put it together didn't modify AdvUninstLog.nsh so that it looks for Uninstall.log rather than Uninstall.dat... so it's a bit broken. It won't generate a proper uninstallation log.

Also I observe from your second picture that $R1 is used in the LangString $(WANT_UNINSTALL_BEFORE) but it's not defined... that's why you get " wurde bereits installiert." Need to fix that.

In short, it's not badly broken (though the code is ghastly), but it needs fixing up some time.

[Patrick Storz (ede123)]

This should be fixed with the latest batch of NSIS installer improvements, specifically 15108 [1].
For now we simply keep the uninstall.dat, installer / uninstaller should also be a bit more robust now.

Feel free to test the latest pre-release package [2] and report back if you're still experiencing problems.

[1] http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~inkscape.dev/inkscape/0.92.x/revision/15108
[2] https://download.tuxfamily.org/inkscape/win64/Inkscape-0.92pre2-x64-1.exe