I am trying to make changes to the WixStandardBootstrapperApplication.cpp and generate a dll as per the suggestion from this link. I have downloaded the wix310-debug source and am modifying the file present under wix310-debug\src\ext\BalExtension\wixstdba\ location. There is a wixstdba.vcxproj file under this location which I am trying to open using Visual Studio 2012. Whenever I try to do that I get the error:
Unable to read the project file "wixstdba.vcxproj". The imported project "C:\tools\WixBuild.props" was not found.
I am not sure what should I do to correct this. Also, based on the referenced link, I think I am updating the correct file but let me know if that is not the case. Any help in this would be great. Thanks in advance.
In your vcxproj there's a line like this:
<Import Project="$([MSBuild]::GetDirectoryNameOfFileAbove($(MSBuildProjectDirectory), wix.proj))\tools\WixBuild.targets" />
The debug source isn't really the source of wix. It includes all the wix source files but it is not really buildable. This zip has all the built pdbs and is used to debug only.
You want to download the wix source from wixtoolset's github so that you can build wixstdba. But, this is for version 3.10.3 currently and may have some version specific changes but I don't see anything that would be an issue using the dll built here against wix 3.10.2 since the engine and bootstrapper application interfaces should have remained the same.
But, you should be able to build all this with only the WixStdBA project. You will have to copy over the wixstdba folder. Edit the vcxproj and remove the import line mentioned above (it should be near the bottom).
Now, add this project to your a new solution or your installer solution in visual studio. We need to add addition include and library directories. All these include directories will be in your wix install location (default C:\Program Files (x86)\WiX Toolset v3.10) In Properties -> C/C++ -> General -> additional include directories add your wix SDK include path. If you are using visual studio 2013 you can use the full path or you can use "$(WIX)\SDK\vs2013\inc". $(WIX) should reference the WIX environment variable which points to the install directory which is added when installing wix. This should be the better option if you will be building on a build system with wix installed since the location may be different across machines.
Now for addition library directories, we go to the Properties -> Linker -> General -> Additional Library Directoryes and add in the correct lib path. If you are using visual studio 2013 you want to put in $(WIX)\SDK\vs2013\lib\x86. Finally we need to reference the libs that are needed to build the bootstrapper dll. Under Linker -> Input -> Additional Dependencies, add in "dutil.lib;balutil.lib". My additional dependencies has a lot more stuff and I don't remember if it was by default there. Here's my Additional Dependencies in full anyways
dutil.lib;balutil.lib;advapi32.lib;comctl32.lib;comdlg32.lib;gdi32.lib;gdiplus.lib;kernel32.lib;msimg32.lib;odbc32.lib;odbccp32.lib;ole32.lib;oleaut32.lib;shell32.lib;shlwapi.lib;user32.lib;uuid.lib;wininet.lib;winspool.lib;version.lib;%(AdditionalDependencies)
With this you should be able to build the wixstdba project and get a dll built. Without editing any code this should be the exact same as the wix included wixstdba.dll.
You could try referencing this dll instead of the wix included one (have to define your own BootstrapperApplication instead of using the BootstrapperApplicationRef to one of the wix ones) or just drop in this dll into your wix location's bin.
Related
So here's the scenario: I have several wix projects that the exact same extra msbuild targets and tasks to automate some very tedious tasks: things like building a help file and authenticode signing the msi and output files using signtool.exe.
Having gotten tired of copying changes to these scripts into 5 different repositories every time I made a fix. So I got clever and I turned them into nuget packages with a .targets file in the build folder. A simple nuget restore turns a laundry list of packages into targets files.
The problem
Wix v3 doesn't like packages. It doesn't support package references so packages.config looks like the thing. Except that visual studio doesn't like packages.config. It will happily restore the packages (into the folder I specified with a nuget.config) but none of the .targets files are automatically imported.
Easy enough to fix: I just added an import statement into my wixproj file. Except that visual studio doesn't automatically re-evaluate the wixproj after running the restore operation. We can work with this, but it is really annoying to have to build, unload the project, reload the project, and rebuild any time the packages change.
So I tried to fix it
I crawled through the log output of a standard C# project build and discovered the Nuget.Targets file, which can be imported into a project to provide pack and restore targets. It also let me convert to packagereferences, which are somewhat more convenient and less messy than packages.config, but I still had to manually add the import statement for the nuget.g.targets and nuget.g.props files that were produced by the restore target.
And, since I had to manually import those files, I'm right back to the build, unload, reload, rebuild workflow.
Attempt number 2
I discovered through intense internet searching that msbuild recently added a /restore flag to their command line utility specifically to force a project re-evaluation after restoring packages. This works on the command line, but visual studio seems to be clueless. (Maybe because of something that wix v3 does behind the scenes in the Visual Studio template?) In any case, they mentioned in the issue notes that they are essentially using an msbuild task with new global properties to force a re-evaluation. So I attempted to add such a step to the pre-build event of my wixproj, but no sauce.
The question
How do I tell visual studio to re-evaluate this wixproj after running restore? Is there some sort of property or item group I need to add to the wixproj? Is there some kind of target I can insert into the build process?
Update 1:
Found a project property that looked promising: UseHostCompilerIfAvailable, but it didn't work. Still got the same problem.
I am working with SDL2 and its add-on libraries SDL2_image and SDL2_ttf, using Visual Studio 2017. The libraries, and the .dll files that come with them, are in another folder (C:\SDL2.0\lib\x86), which is in the system path.
When I run, it fails, with this error message:
The procedure entry point InterlockedCompareExchange#12 could not be located in the dynamic link library C:\SDL2.0\lib\x86\SDL2.ttf.dll.
I can fix this by putting libfreetype-6.dll, which comes with SDL2_ttf, in the same folder as the .vcxproj file; or in the Debug folder. I can also fix it by putting the .dll into c:\windows\SysWOW64. But I want to distribute my code, and I don't want to put that file in each folder or require users to have admin access (to access c:\windows\SysWOW64); I want Windows to find it in the PATH, as it does with the other .dll files it's using here.
A few things I tried as I looked around the web for solution (to no effect):
Recompiling libfreetype-6.dll
Downloading the latest versions of all associated libraries
Rearranging the .lib files in Project Properties, Linker, Input, Additional Dependencies. Admittedly I may not have tried all possible arrangements as there are several dependencies
regsvr32 libfreetype-6.dll. This led to a different error message:
The module "libfreetype-6.dll" may not be compatible with the version of Windows that you're running. Check if the module is compatible with an x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) version of regsvr32.exe.
I saw here that maybe I should use the version of regsvr32 in the system32 folder; when I do that, I get
The module "libfreetype-6.dll" was loaded but the entry-point DllRegisterServer was not found. Make sure that "libfreetype-6.dll" is a valid DLL or OCX file and then try again.
So: is there a way to get the program to find libfreetype-6.dll in another folder in the PATH, and eliminate the error message about the procedure entry point?
The program I'm testing on now is from the TrueType tutorial from the LazyFoo website (source).
I have been searching around for an answer to this question, but I cannot find the documentation on it. I found a few similar questions asked here, but none that completely cover it?
Similar Question
What do all of the different files in the project directory do? I am trying to make my project open source and I don't want to have a ton of unnecessary files in my repository. What files are vital and what files will be generated when the user initially loads the project? Its important to note that this is a VB Form Application
Base Directory:
*.vb
*.Designer.vb
*.resx
*.vbproj
*.sln
*.vbproj.user
*.config
Any of the other folders in the base directory?
*/bin
*/Collection
*/My Project
*/obj
*/Resources
*.suo and *.user files can be ignored. They store user specific settings such as window arrangements, open files etc. Those files are generated by Visual Studio whenever a solution is opened.
*.vb files are somewhat important since they contain your source code...
*.sln and *.vbproj files tell Visual Studio which projects are in a solution and which files are in a project, respectively. They also contain project specific settings such as build plattforms, custom build events, target .NET Framework etc.
*.resx and app.config can be important, depending on your project. They should not be left out when you publish your project, however since they're part of the Visual Studio project. If they're truly not needed you can remove them from the project.
Edit
Folders bin and obj are where Visual Studio generates the compiled output so you should not include those when you publish the source code of your project. Any other folders are project specific so it depends on your project if they're needed or not.
As a rule of thumb, anything that is automatically generated should be excluded when you publish your source code.
Also, if you don't already, you should use a version control system such as Subversion or GIT to manage your sources. Any essential files / folders as explained above should go in there.
I am in the process of learning WIX all thanks to MS for removing such a nice tool (vdproj) from the latest versions of visual studio.
I have come to know that I can add my files (and dlls) to distribute in WIX using that tag. It is OK. But in vdproj it was very easy to add all files. I just need to right click in file view, and select 'add project output'. This was enough to add dozen of files that were required for my application. In visual studio 2012, and using WIX 3.7, what options do I have to automatically list all those dlls that are required by my application?
There is no automatic method that could be written that wouldn't require you to remove some items and redirect some items to other folders. In the simple case, you wouldn't need an automatic method anyway.
In your WiX Setup project, add a reference to each project you want to include the output from. In the properties for a reference, set Harvest to True and Project Output Groups as desired.
Because project harvesting doesn't work in some corner cases, it is disabled by default. You must enable it in your project file. (See the references.)
Build and you will have ComponentGroups generated for your harvested projects. The script file is in the obj folder (since it's not a file you want to keep in source control).
For example, for the project ConsoleApplication1, add a ConsoleApplication1.Binaries ComponentGroupRef to a Feature. By default, all such components are placed into INSTALLFOLDER. If you want them elsewhere, you can change the ItemGroup metatdata or one of the properties that affect the HavestProjects target.
Unless you have many project references that change often, there is no need to automate this.
References: WiX.chm
HarvestProjects Target
Using Project References and Variables
I would like to create a setup project based on WiX which does the following (as well as creating the installation package):
callable from msbuild running on a CI build server (Hudson)
take a version number from some asset in either the setup project or the main assembly
take the current build number from the CI system
create a full product version number [version].[build] such as 1.3.432
store this value in an asset (e.g. the main assembly) is such a way that it can be read out at run time and displayed on the splash window
I have tried a number of approaches and googled a lot but have not found a workable solution. Can anyone help?
The WiX toolset does this by creating a version.cs, a version.h and a version.wxi during the MSBuild then including those files in all the projects. That way our executable can print out their version when you run something like candle.exe -? and all of the bundles and .msi packages have their versions set correctly.
You can see how we do this in tools\WixBuild.Version.targets (here). It would straight forward to override the properties in WixBuild.Version.targets with properties passed via the command-line to MSBuild via Hudson if you wanted.