WritePackageDefW fails when the Visual Studio installation path contains spaces (ERROR_INVALID_NAME)

[user76-real]

Hi,
I found an issue with WritePackageDefW when installing VisualD.

The installer executes the following command:
rundll32.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)\VisualD\visuald.dll",WritePackageDefW "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\18.0" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\18\BuildTools"

Instead of completing successfully, VisualD displays the following Windows error:
"The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect."
(Error 123 / ERROR_INVALID_NAME)

After inspecting the source code, WriteExtensionPackageDefinition() splits the command line at the first space and then directly uses the second argument as a file path:

auto idx = indexOf(wargs, ' ');
registryRoot = (wargs[0 .. idx] ~ "\0"w)[0 .. idx];
string fname = to!string(wargs[idx + 1 .. $]);

Images:

[rainers]

Thanks for the report.

I doubt the spaces are the actual problem, because every default installation has them. I suspect it has to do with installing on top of just the "Build Tools", not a full Visual Studio installation.

What does

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe" -products * -prerelease  -version [18.0,19.0) -property installationPath

yield on your system? Maybe there are multiple results and the installer picks the wrong one.

The second argument to WritePackageDefW is expected to end with visuald.pkgdef so maybe multiple results even cause a newline to be inserted into the command line.