Uninstaller doesn't remove Brackets start menu shortcut (sometimes)

[tvoliter]

1. Double click "Brackets Sprint 13.msi" file to install. Complete installation
2. Launch Brackets Sprint 13 from start menu to verify it runs
3. Double click "Brackets Sprint 13.msi" again. Choose "remove program"

Result:
After uninstall "Brackets Sprint 13" still appears in Programs list. Attempting to launch installed Brackets shows that it's an alias pointing to a missing file

[tvoliter]

I tested this same scenario removing Brackets via Add/Remove Programs and that method also left the "Brackets Sprint 13" alias in the Start menu

[gruehle]

Reviewed.

[peterflynn]

I can't repro via either method -- I tried on the installer build machine (Win 7?) and my own machine (Win XP).

However, Justin says he can repro (in Brackets and Shadow) and thinks he has a fix.

[peterflynn]

Raymond can repro too. Justin's fix didn't pan out, so we will have to try a different approach...

[peterflynn]

More updates: Raymond and Justin both can't repro it anymore. Jay can repro on his Win7 machine, though.

[peterflynn]

I suspect this has something to do with the use of "advertised" vs. "non-advertised" shortcuts, and their interaction with multi-user profile configurations.

We're currently using a "non-advertised" shortcut, which is less fancy but apparently has lots of gotchas around multi-user installs. "Advertised" shortcuts seem more complex and have a few limitations, but are supposedly safer in most cases. Yet I'm pretty sure Raj specifically avoided using an "Advertised" shortcut. I don't know why.

All of that makes me hesitant to crack open this can of worms before Raj returns...

Further reading:

• http://blogs.technet.com/b/alexshev/archive/2008/02/20/from-msi-to-wix-part-10-shortcuts.aspx
• http://windows-installer-xml-wix-toolset.687559.n2.nabble.com/rfc-non-advertised-shortcuts-and-ICE43-td691479.html
• http://blog.bittercoder.com/?p=367

[peterflynn]

Also UTR for Adam on Windows 8...

[peterflynn]

Moving out of sprint 13 per discussion. I'll add this to the release notes.

[peterflynn]

Additional notes:

I thought this might be related to whether the user is running as an admin or not, but it doesn't seem to be. Jay is running as admin and he repros every time; but Adam and the build machine are also running as admin and are never able to repro.

Raymond mentioned that the one time he was able to repro this, he was running as admin and the shortcut was in his user-specific Start menu folder (not the global cross-user one). I'm not sure if that's as expected for non-advertised shortcuts or not, though.

[peterflynn]

I repro'ed this once on my XP machine, finally. It was while doing a test of side-by-side installs: install sprint 13, launch it, close it, install sprint "14" fake installer, launch it, close it, uninstall sprint 13 -- leaves the shortcut behind. (Uninstalling sprint "14" after that does remove the sprint "14" shortcut... but the 13 one still remains).

[peterflynn]

Moving to Sprint 15 after discussion

[RajNarayana]

I have tried few times installing and uninstalling brackets from brackets-sprint-14-WINDOWS build and I couldn't repro this bug.

[peterflynn]

@RajNarayana: It definitely reproduces with Sprint 14 on several computers (including the installer build machine last I checked). It might be helpful to ping some others on the team in SF to see if they can still reproduce it also.

[peterflynn]

Changing tag to Sprint 16: we would still like to investigate right away (i.e. start of next week), but we may not have time to merge a fix before the sprint ends.