electron / electron/forge

WiX MSI creates generic icon in start menu and on desktop

Open
#1,994 11 comments 5 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
documentation make maker/msi platform/windows
Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
7.1k
Forks
641
Avg merge
3d 1h
Merged PRs (30d)
30

Description

### Preflight Checklist

* [X] I have read the [contribution documentation](https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-forge/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md) for this project.
* [X] I agree to follow the [code of conduct](https://github.com/electron/electron/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md) that this project follows, as appropriate.
* [X] I have searched the issue tracker for a bug that matches the one I want to file, without success.

### Issue Details

* **Electron Forge Version:**
* 6.0.0-beta.53
* **Electron Version:**
* 10.1.3, 9.3.1
* **Operating System:**
* Windows 10 Build 18362
* **Last Known Working Electron Forge version:**:
* 6.0.0-beta.52 (at least for the start menu part, this one didn't generate a desktop icon at all)

### Expected Behavior
The icons in start menu and on desktop use the application's icon as specified in packager config.

![after](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/22038058/95796080-3d962f80-0cec-11eb-99f9-cd6cb8f0eac6.png)

### Actual Behavior
The icons in start menu and on desktop use a generic icon.

![before](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/22038058/95796085-42f37a00-0cec-11eb-97e5-ddb91884c6ba.png)

### To Reproduce
- Set an icon through packager config
- Set up the WiX MSI maker
- Create an MSI installer
- Install the application
- Check the desktop icon and icon in start menu

### Additional Information
What I found during my investigation:
- It seems there is a bug in the latest version of `electron-wix-msi` that prevents extraction of the app's icon from the packaged exe. See also felixrieseberg/electron-wix-msi#99.
- If you fix that extraction, the extracted icon will still be of low quality, resulting in a blurry desktop icon.

The good news is that the latest versions of `electron-wix-msi` also allow specifying a custom icon to use. This means we could do the following:
- Easy fix: Adjust the documentation for `MakerWixConfig` to include the `appIconPath` property. Including this in your maker-wix config _already works_ at the moment, only the doc is missing.
- Improvement: Ideally, we can use the icon path specified in packager config as a default for this `appIconPath` property.

Demo that this works, on my own app:
- Commit: https://github.com/mistermicheels/current-task/commit/11fc415e03f1c8764618955a7da8336ffb8bd844
- Before (installer in artifacts): https://github.com/mistermicheels/current-task/actions/runs/296342941
- After (installer in artifacts): https://github.com/mistermicheels/current-task/actions/runs/303097091

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Assessment

This issue has not been assessed yet.

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.