I set my Custom Action to cmd.exe and adding these arguments:
/K XmlPreProcess.exe /x:"[SETTINGSFILE]" /i:"[TARGETDIR]web.config" [CUSTOMSETTINGS] /e:[ENVIRONMENTBUTTON] >log.txt
I'm trying to either:
a) stop the command screen so I can read it
b) write the results to a file so I can read it.
[ENVIRONMENTUTTON] should be equal to QA - which I selected from a dialog form showing 4 radio buttons. [SETTINGSFILE] is a user-entered field also a a dialog form.
The command window flashes by, I don't have time to read it, and no log.txt is created.
Original I was trying to run just XmlPreProcess.exe, but same problem, it was given an error and I couldn't see the error to debug it.
Related questions: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2007635/making-sense-out-on-msi-verbose-trace-running-a-customaction http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2001747/how-to-debug-failure-of-a-custom-action-in-an-msi-setup-project
Tried this once: msiexec /i "C:\MyPackage\Example.msi" /L*V "C:\log\example.log" but didn't give much useful either - only confirmed that my values were substituting correctly in [SETTINGSFILE] and [ENVIRONMENTUTTON].
I'm posting as a new question because now I'm dealing specifically with cmd.exe.