Quite simply, what the title says: I have some old source code with a WiX installer project in it. I'm trying to determine what Version of WiX was used to build it so I'm using the same version when I try to rebuild it.
If you open the wixproj file into a text editor (or unload/edit in Visual Studio), you will see (or should) the following property;
<ProductVersion>3.8</ProductVersion>
That is the only reference I could find to what I know is the version I am using.
Related
I am creating an installation file using VS2019 which creates two files setup.exe and install.msi. Is it possible to bundle them together for easier distribution into one setup file. Previously I used iexpress to bundle them together and using custom.bat file to execute setup after extracting. Though this is an very old technique, Is their any more innovative way we can use directly from VS2019 ?
I found this guide which makes use of Advanced Installer through a Visual Studio extension. I was able to take two projects in a solution and package them into one .msi, which installs both of the project executables when ran.
You will need to download the "Advanced Installer" Visual Studio extension (see the "Extensions" menu item in Visual Studio), as well as install Advanced Installer itself, which can be found here (the extension will prompt you to download Advanced Installer if you attempt to use it without having it installed). All the extension does is make use of the Advanced Installer software, but through Visual Studio. Once you have it all configured, all you need to do is perform a build on the Advanced Installer project that you will need to add to your solution.
I wrote up a quick WiX preprocessor extension to grab some product version information from a file we keep in our root folder.
I'd like to keep this extension in the same solution as our WiX setup project, because it's easier to maintain. But the problem is that when testing, we use a Debug configuration, and when releasing a build, we switch to Release. This means that I have two extensions to deal with.
How would I tell WiX to grab one depending on the current configuration?
I've been looking at the reference paths in the WiX project's properties, and added "..\MyWiXExtensions\bin\$(Configuration)\" as a folder, hoping that it would pick up the MSBuild property, but that doesn't seem to work.
I've also looked at the build events. I could copy the output dll to my setup project's folder, but wouldn't that break references if I clean my solution?
I'm using WiX 3.7 and Visual Studio 2012.
I ended up using a post-build event on my extension that would copy the output to my wixproj's folder.
I just have to build my wixproj separately from the rest of the solution to prevent file locking issues when overwriting the dll. If file locking does come up, I just have to close VS and reopen the solution.
As a side note, referencing the project itself instead of the dll could be a nice feature to have in Votive.
All my .net applications take their version from one C# version file.
lets call it version.cs.
How can i make one WIX project set the version according to this file?
I saw :
How can I set the WiX installer version to the current build version?
but it cannot help me because I am wrapping several DLL and some of them may have the correct version and some not.
How can I Bind the version from C# file?
WiX has no support for this. You'd have to write some build automation to extract the version from the cs file and pass it to WiX's command line at build time.
Personally what I do is use build automation to own the build version and push it into both WiX and C#. Since I'm using TFS Team Build there are libraries already written ( TFSVersioning ) that do this for me.
When my file set includes DLLs with one ore more dependencies to the C++ run-time DLLs I need to install the file from VCRedist.exe. This can be difficult, since each DLL is dependent on a specific version of the C++ run-time.
How do I add automatically the run-time redistributables to my installer?
How do I handle DLLs that require different versions of the C++ run-time in the WinSxS?
You need to install the latest version (highest) version required by your libraries and a policy file that redirects older versions to the new version.
You can do both with merge modules installed with Visual Studio. They're usually located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Merge Modules. See MergeRef element and an example how to install Visual C++ redistributable with your installer. You will also need to add a policy merge module to your install.
You can simple make sure the latest vcredist is installed, it automatically includes support for older versions.
I think the easiest it to use bootstrapper to install the runtime before your installer runs. You might need to create your own package, but it is easy to use Bootstrapper Manifest Generator for this.
In the product.xml you can add an installation check to make sure it is not installed twice, for example:
<InstallChecks>
<MsiProductCheck Property="VCRedistInstalled" Product="{1F1C2DFC-2D24-3E06-BCB8-725134ADF989}"/>
</InstallChecks>
See here for other GUIDs.
Neither heat nor Votive does support the requested feature. The run-time DLLs must be added manually.
Background:
I always try to ensure the following tenet in my projects:
After a fresh checkout a developer should be able to do all project related tasks with solely the contents of the combined folders.
Obviously, this isn't always possible (e.g. Visual Studio for Windows development). However, I really dislike having to install any third-party libraries or tools that are specific a project like log4net, NHibernate, NUnit, etc. There are number of reasons for this including:
For a given development machine, you may work on several different projects, all which leverage different versions of the same third-party library or tool.
Minimizing the environment setup requirements makes setting up new developers or machines much easier
Facilitates easier maintenance of automated builds
Assumptions/Contraints
I am currently using WiX 3 beta, but if there is way for either 2.0 or 3.0 please respond
I am using Visual Studio 2005
The IDE syntax highlighting is not a requirement.
Question:
Is it possible to avoid local installation of the WiX toolset and use flat files instead? If so, please explain how.
See Also:
First, build your WiX installer:
Create a new WiX Installer Project in Visual Studio 2005.
Build your WiX XML accordingly.
Now, to integrate the WiX toolkit into your source tree:
Copy c:\Program Files\Windows Installer XML v3\bin to a sub-directory in your source tree. I used WiX\bin relative to my .wixproj file.
Copy c:\Program Files\MSBuild\WiX\v3.0\ to a subdirectory in your source tree. I used WiX\v3.0 relative to my .wixproj file.
Either add the following code or replace the line that follows:
<WixTargetsPath Condition=" '$(WixTargetsPath)' == ''>$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\WiX\v3.0\Wix.targets</WixTargetsPath>
With the following lines:
<WixToolPath>$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\WiX\bin\</WixToolPath>
<WixTasksPath>$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\WiX\v3.0\WixTasks.dll</WixTasksPath>
<WixTargetsPath>$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\WiX\v3.0\Wix.targets</WixTargetsPath>
As you can see, the WixToolPath, WixTasksPath and WixTargetsPath directives reflect the location of the folders I've instructed you to copy.
Rename your .wixproj to .csproj. This ensures that Visual Studio does not get confused by the .wixproj file but because the .wixproj is a valid MSBuild project, Visual Studio will be able to work with it.
Using this method, the WiX directory as described is about 9MB large.
I know with WiX 2, you can just download the executable files and the dll's to whatever directory your project is in. Then you create a .bat file to run candle.exe and light.exe with the parameters you need to build your installer.
That way, all your projects can have their own version of WiX with a disk drive hit of only about 4 megs each.
I'm not positive, but I think you can do the same with WiX 3.