February 2010 Blog Posts
In previous posts I’ve shown you our SuperForm test application solution structure and how the main wxs and wxi include file look like. In this post I’ll show you how to automate inclusion of files to install into your build process. For our SuperForm application we have a single exe to install. But in the real world we have 10s or 100s of different files from dll’s to resource files like pictures. It all depends on what kind of application you’re building. Writing a directory structure for so many files by hand is out of the question. What we need...
In the previous post we’ve taken a look at the WiX solution/project structure and project properties. We’re still playing with our super SuperForm application and today we’ll take a look at the general parts of the main wxs file, SuperForm.wxs, and the wxi include file. For wxs file we’ll just go over the general description of what each part does in the code comments. The more detailed descriptions will be in future posts about features themselves. WXI include file Include files are exactly what their name implies. To include a wxi file into the wxs file you have...
This is the first post about building a WiX 3 installer from zero. The reason I’ve decided to write this WiX series is that the good sources are quite hard to find and examples even harder. The finished installer (at the end of the series) will be localized in 2 languages, have localized EULA check, product key validation via a custom action, updating (and killing the running app when updating) and wrapping both localized MSI’s into a bootstrapper that will enable you to choose the installation language and install prerequisites like .Net framework 3.5. Those are the general features...