More Random Status

Confession: big childhood crush was Martha Davis of The Motels.... Following up on that, I made a Guilty Pleasures playlist on Spotify (The Motels aren't on it. No guilt in loving me some Motels). At first I just left it public, because I was like, I don't care what people think of my Guilty Pleasures, but then it was even too embarrassing for me, so I hid it....I've mostly stayed away from the social media, but sometimes I just habitually browse to FB. I suppose this is why I had to give it up for a while in the first place.... I don't get why the Rockies want me to pay something like $30-40 / game for at least 20 games just to get Opening Day tickets. I know that a third of the way through the season I will be able to get those same tickets for about $10 apiece because no one is going to wan to go watch this team. It irritates me that they want you to pay all this money and then you go to the park at mid-season and they've completely closed off the third level except for right behind the plate....Northwestern, still undefeated in NCAA tournament play....What is CNN going to air when they finally find that plane?.... Where we are staying in Paris in June: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/497695. This is going to be awesome!..... Also have tickets again for VLV. It's going to be a short trip this time, and overshadowed by the Paris trip, but I am still REALLY looking forward to it. Need a bit of a break from the routine.

WiX Questions

If you've posted some question about WiX to me on here, I haven't forgotten about you. I just haven't made it a priority to try and find the answer for you. :) I post here because I am discovering how to use some of these things just as many of you are, and admittedly there isn't a wealth of information out there.

Seriously, though, I appreciate the questions and want to take some time, even out of my own curiosity, to find the answers. Between work and life and trying to get ready for the fantasy baseball season, and flossing my gerbil's teeth, however, there just hasn't been much time. If you've posted questions and subsequently found the answers out there in the Tubes somewhere, I'd appreciate if you could post your answer here. "Make this your action item." Thanks!

.Net Reactor and WiX

Okay, here's the situation: ("My parents went away on a week's vacation...") I need to obfuscate the code of a project I am working on using .Net Reactor. The project is in .Net (obviously) and we're using VS 2012 and WiX 3.7 to create the installer. Obfuscating code with .Net Reactor is relatively simple as well as powerful. In a side-by-side comparison with dotfuscator we found that Reactor did a better job particularly in control flow obfuscation than its more expensive counterpart. The issue before me is getting WiX to do this obfuscation before creating the installer.

Actually the project is broken up into several solutions, a client and several services that get packaged together. Obfuscating the initial project, the client, was relatively straightforward. First I created a .Net Reactor project specifying the protection options, settings, and files I wanted to obfuscate. I added that project file to my solution as a resource to copy into the output directory. The solution builds a number of projects including some shared libraries, so it was just easiest to copy the project into the output directory and run it from there. I edited the wixproj file (in VisualStudio you can right-click the project file and select 'Edit Project File') and overwrote the BeforeBuild target as such:


 

The .Net Reactor command-line help here, http://www.eziriz.com/help/source/command_line.htm, is useful, though if you are using the project file as I am, most of the settings will come from it. I added the -q[uiet] flag to keep Reactor's notification window from popping up. I should note here that by default a Reactor project will have \_secured\ as the Target File setting. That setting results in each obfuscated assembly being tucked away neatly in its own directory, which I would then have to pick through to pack back into the installer. To remedy this, I just had the obfuscated files overwrite the originals by removing the subdirectory of the Target File:
\. That has worked pretty well for me except that I need to be sure to rebuild the VS solution before building the WiX installer each time, else Reactor finds the previously obfuscated file and chokes.

For each of the services then I built a Reactor project and added multiple elements to the BeforeBuild of the wixproj that builds that installer. I also had to separately build a few other DLLs where I needed to have a lower level of obfuscation. It was simple just to create their own separate Reactor project and execute them in the BeforeBuild as well.

Random thoughts since I'm withdrawing from posting random, meaningless FB status updates:

I feel awful for the families of those who were on the Malaysian Airlines flight, but c'mon, CNN. I don't need hourly updates on its last known radar blip.... I wasn't blown away by the ending of Breaking Bad like some said they were. Don't get me wrong, it was quality. The overall series, however, was amazing. Easily unseated The Sopranos as my favorite television show ever.... I took in the finale of True Detective last night too. The acting in that show, especially by McConaughey, was great. The writing and directing were equally on point. It was a haunting series.... Tom Waits' "Martha" is a devastating song. Replace "Martha" with any hope or dream you've ever had.... Jeff Buckley singing "Hallelujah" is pretty devastating too, but you already knew that.