x/build: windows installer doesn't allow installing on removable media

[Joebugg]

Go version

go version go1.23.3 windows/amd64

Output of go env in your module/workspace:

N/A (Not installed)

What did you do?

Downloaded Windows AMD64 installer package (MSI) on both my laptop and a VPS.
Installing on laptop to HDD or SSD works fine while hitting a snag on the virtual machine.
Tried installing it to any of the drives, including C: which is the system partition on a VirtIO instance (SCSI/SAS), and just for laughs to see if they would work, network storage slabs (also run through VirtIO).
Looked up permissions issues which it seems to not be.

What did you see happen?

Error saying it needs to be installed on a HDD, which of course a Virtio instance is not.

What did you expect to see?

It to install as if it's on a physical machine.
Is this a bogus error message from the installer, or is it actually hard coded not to work on any partition hanging off of a non-SATA (i.e. USB or network) drive? There should be an option to bypass this if it's the boot drive if it's intentional. It's a strange requirement in this age. I assume that using the ZIP version and just manually adding the paths would work fine, as a workaround. Editing the MSI file's scripts would also fix it but that's more of an intermediate level of skill to do.

[seankhliao]

please show the actual error.

[Joebugg]

"Installation directory must be on a local hard drive."
To be honest the error message should be updated, but I think that's Microsoft's problem. It should be saying something like non-removable storage?

[seankhliao]

looking at the common solutions on the internet, I wonder if it's valid to drop these lines in the msi config?

https://go.googlesource.com/build/+/b109b5473f1bc62f6bf632f18acb69f280f08ff4/internal/installer/windowsmsi/windowsmsi.go#529

    <Publish Dialog="BrowseDlg" Control="OK" Event="DoAction" Value="WixUIValidatePath" Order="3">1</Publish>
    <Publish Dialog="BrowseDlg" Control="OK" Event="SpawnDialog" Value="InvalidDirDlg" Order="4"><![CDATA[NOT WIXUI_DONTVALIDATEPATH AND WIXUI_INSTALLDIR_VALID<>"1"]]></Publish>

cc @golang/windows

[Joebugg]

Well, there had to be a reason that removable media was blocked... Yes, VirtIO and other solutions of that kind tend to skirt the line of 'removable'. The virtual drive the OS is housed on is not going to be 'removed' without 'issues'. ;) The others are easily reconfigurable and moved between machines. I guess it isn't just VirtIO but that is a special case. Is there a legit reason to stop someone from installing it to a USB drive? Wouldn't the issues that would cause be cured by just plugging it back in?

Is it possible that someone put in that restriction because of boilerplating/copying existing installer configurations? In other words "Well it's always been done that way." or "Well, everyone else was doing it."

[alexbrainman]

looking at the common solutions on the internet, I wonder if it's valid to drop these lines in the msi config?

I don't know. I am not a WIX expert.

Well, there had to be a reason that removable media was blocked... Yes, VirtIO and other solutions of that kind tend to skirt the line of 'removable'. The virtual drive the OS is housed on is not going to be 'removed' without 'issues'. ;) The others are easily reconfigurable and moved between machines. I guess it isn't just VirtIO but that is a special case. Is there a legit reason to stop someone from installing it to a USB drive? Wouldn't the issues that would cause be cured by just plugging it back in?

You don't really need a Go installer. You can just copy all prebuilt Go files into a directory and add bin directory under that directory to your PATH, and everything should work.

Is it possible that someone put in that restriction because of boilerplating/copying existing installer configurations? In other words "Well it's always been done that way." or "Well, everyone else was doing it."

You can look at git history, if you are interested.

Alex