Destination and start in folders are wrong and icons are not shown.

[christiandersen]

I am getting to the end of creating a new installation package for my Image Measurements tool. I thought it would be cool to use Squirel. Because it said better than click once. Now i created an installation exe package and it installs but the desktop and startmenu link files are not working properly. The destination folder is pointing to at exe file which is one step higher than the app one. Which is totally wrong. And the start in directory simply just looks malformed.

Destination:
C:\Users\ChristianAndersenAve\AppData\Local\ImageMeasurementApp\ImageMeasurement.exe

Start in:
istianAndersenAve\AppData\Local\ImageMeasurementApp\app-18.10.6TC:\Users\ChristianAndersenAve\AppData\Local\ImageM

And as a topping on the cake the application shortcuts do not have an icon.

Any ideas?

[squaredinfinity]

Same issue here.

Docs mention that shortcut should call C:\Users\kbailey\AppData\Local\MyApp\Update.exe --processStart MyApp.exe but it instead points to C:\Users\kbailey\AppData\Local\MyApp\MyApp.exe which does not exist at this level.

[Thieum]

@christiandersen @squaredinfinity did you upgrade squirrel from one version to another? I had the same issue when migrating my applications from 1.4.0 to 1.9.1. Once on 1.9.1, the shortcut were ok after fixing them and installing other upgrades afterward.

[eliw00d]

I just came across this after upgrading from 1.9.1 to 2.0.1 as a result of upgrading Electron Forge which upgraded electron-winstaller. Any thoughts as to why it happens?

I can fix it manually, but if I re-install it just happens again.

[caesay]

It's fine that the shortcut is one level higher (eg. %localappdata%\yourapp\yourapp.exe instead of %localappdata%\yourapp\app-1.0.0\yourapp.exe). Squirrel is supposed to create a stub executable there at the root directory which runs the latest downloaded version of your application.

If this is broken for you, it's likely that stubs are not being created and added to your packages - or the version of Squirrel you are updating from does not support extracting stub executables. Check your logs when building your Squirrel packages for messages referencing the creation of stub executables, and then unzip and check your .nupkg to make sure that yourapp_StubExecutable.exe exists.

[eliw00d]

Oh, the issue I'm running into is that "Start in" is garbled like in the OP:

ta\Local\TheApplication\TheApplication.exe8C:\Users\eliw00d\AppData\Local\TheApplication\app-0.25

and the icon is somehow set to:

0@C:\Users\eliw00d\AppData\Local\TheApplication.

Technically, the shortcut still works, it's just weird.

Squirrel-Shortcut.log has this:

[10/01/23 16:44:41] info: Program: Starting Squirrel Updater: --createShortcut=TheApplication.exe
[10/01/23 16:44:41] info: ApplyReleasesImpl: About to create shortcuts for TheApplication.exe, rootAppDir C:\Users\eliw00d\AppData\Local\TheApplication
[10/01/23 16:44:41] info: ApplyReleasesImpl: Creating shortcut for TheApplication.exe => C:\Users\eliw00d\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\MyCompany\The Application.lnk
[10/01/23 16:44:41] info: ApplyReleasesImpl: About to save shortcut: C:\Users\eliw00d\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\MyCompany\The Application.lnk (target C:\Users\eliw00d\AppData\Local\TheApplication\TheApplication.exe, workingDir C:\Users\eliw00d\AppData\Local\TheApplication\app-0.25.5, args , toastActivatorCSLID 698df4ba-0fa8-4430-bbbb-c5a16cb48f80)
[10/01/23 16:44:41] info: ApplyReleasesImpl: Creating shortcut for TheApplication.exe => C:\Users\eliw00d\Desktop\The Application.lnk
[10/01/23 16:44:41] info: ApplyReleasesImpl: About to save shortcut: C:\Users\eliw00d\Desktop\The Application.lnk (target C:\Users\eliw00d\AppData\Local\TheApplication\TheApplication.exe, workingDir C:\Users\eliw00d\AppData\Local\TheApplication\app-0.25.5, args , toastActivatorCSLID 698df4ba-0fa8-4430-bbbb-c5a16cb48f80)
[10/01/23 16:44:42] info: Program: Finished Squirrel Updater

I don't see anything wrong there since workingDir is what is used for "Start in" to my knowledge.

[anaisbetts]

Hm, can someone share a sample installer that has this issue?

[eliw00d]

@anaisbetts I was working on getting a reproduction ready without all the contents of my application. However, I noticed that when I replaced the description field with something shorter than what was already there, suddenly the "Start in" and "Icon" were correct. The original description had 285 characters. It seems that shortcut fields have a limit of 260 characters. Although the "Comment" field that gets populated by the provided description truncates, I guess the other characters spill over somehow? I adjusted my description to be at most 260 characters and everything is working again.

[anaisbetts]

That's an easy fix! Can you submit a PR to make releasify throw if description is too long? You want to make this fail on build, not on shortcut creation (since by then it will be too late and it will be failing on users' computers rather than on developer builds where it should). Great work on finding this!