Delete application files on uninstall

[TristanPouliquen]

Hello,

My app creates some files in the %APPDATA% directory. When a user uninstalls my app, I would like these files to be deleted, so as to not leave useless files on my users' computer.

As is, this does not seem to work, at least on Windows.

Is there a way to make this work?

Deleting app data seems a standard procedure for me.

[simonhyll]

My best guess is that the WIX installer isn't configured to do that. This however can be fairly easily taken care of with the new NSIS based installer. I haven't tried it myself yet so can't tell you exactly how, just offer the comfort that there is a way of doing it 😅

[TristanPouliquen]

Thanks, yes I was looking into Wix fragments, with the RemoveFolderEx directive in particular.

I was looking at the base Wix file from Tauri (https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri/blob/2f70d8da2bc079400bb49e6793f755306049aab2/tooling/bundler/src/bundle/windows/templates/main.wxs), and found this guide (https://www.hass.de/content/wix-how-use-removefolderex-your-xml-scripts) to guide me through adding the necessary directives.

I will update you on if it works :-)

Thanks again for your time!

[TristanPouliquen]

Do you have an idea as to when Tauri v1.3 will be going out? :)

Will you completely drop the MSI installer? Or could it be useful if I make a PR adding the deletion of these files to the base template?

[FabianLars]

Do you have an idea as to when Tauri v1.3 will be going out? :)

Soon-ish. I don't know if we have an internal ETA but we're not pushing any more features to dev because we want to get it out, it was already for quite some time in internal audit.

Will you completely drop the MSI installer?

No, it still has a valid use-case in corporate environments for example (or for some "normal" target audiences), our focus will just swap to NSIS as our main bundle in v2.

Or could it be useful if I make a PR adding the deletion of these files to the base template?

I personally don't see anything wrong with adding it, at least if you can match the NSIS implementation of being a checkbox in the uninstaller. Also, make sure to target the next branch because of what i said above about dev being frozen because of 1.3

[TristanPouliquen]

Yeah, I tried digging a bit into MSI fragments etc, did not find an easy solution and my use-case is a oneshot, where my users will install & version to test out, and reinstall at a later date when I'll have additional data.

I'll just add a diesel migration and let it be run automatically I think, even if it' less clean, but this is for a one-shot in 3 weeks time, and will probably not last much longer so I don't want to spend too much time on this 😅

Thank you again to both of you :)

[TristanPouliquen]

And from what I quickly read, uninstalling a .msi does not alwasy show a UI, so matching the NSIS implementation might be tricky!