I have constructed a bootstrapper bundle with WIX 3.8, in which i pass a given parameter (by DOS-window) for the installation directory to the MSI file.
All works fine.
But now we want to put a second WXS file between the bootstrapper and the MSI.
This one is called Source.wxs and contains the variable for the installation directory and the MsiPackage-tag (which was in the bootstrapper file before), which will start the MSI.
The big question is: How can i pass my parameter from the bootstrapper to the second WXS file?
Thanks in advance!
Patrick
The question "How can i pass my parameter from the bootstrapper to the second WXS file?" displays some lack of understanding.
You see, the second WXS file is (or at least should be) part of your MSI. I assume you added that wxs file directly into the wix setup project, or into a wix library referenced by your wix setup project. Either way, your main wxs file (the one with the <wix> element) will need to pull in the fragment in the second wxs file (by referencing a component or a property etc.).
Once you pull in the contents of the second wxs, any properties defined in it will be part of the wix setup project, and any appropriately-named command line parameter supplied by the bootstrapper will be fed into the correct property, regardless of which wxs file it came from.
If you have a variable name "App_Name" and value as Test in your wix file and wants to use in wxs file you can use as !(loc.App_Name)
example: wix file contains below variable
<String Id="App_Name" Overridable="yes">Test</String>
your wxs can use like this
<Product Name='!(loc.App_Name)'
Related
I need to include a dll/exe in the resulting MSI (created through a WiX project), but I do not want to deploy them during installation: I only want to use them in some CustomAction my purpose is to include an existing exe/dll and call it during installation from wxs code (not from a CustomAction dll).
Is it possible to include files which are not deployed during installation? I mean, only pack them inside the resulting MSI, and call them for some task while they are unpacked inside %temp% folder?
Also, it would be nice if somebody could show some sample code of how to include dll/exe through the Product.wxs XML code unit.
Thanks.
Yes, include them using the Binary element.
<Binary Id='MyCustomActionBinary'
SourceFile='$(var.CustomActionProject.TargetPath)' />
This will make them available to your CustomAction where you can use the BinaryKey attribute to reference the Binary:
<CustomAction Id='MyCustomAction'
BinaryKey='MyCustomActionBinary'
DllEntry='MyCustomFunction'
Execute='deferred' />
If you are using C#/DTF to write a custom action, you simply add the DLL's as references. For any other kind of file you add them to the project as Content | CopyAlways and the build will automatically include these files in the self extracting custom action. They will be available in the current directory ( a temp directory) when the CA runs and automatically cleaned up when the CA ends.
I am using WiX Burn to make my installer, i am bundling one exe and one msi.
And the exe needs an properties file at the time of install.
Is there a way to copy the file using burn, i tried Payload but it is not working.
Can i know the location throguh any Bundle variable where my file is copied.
Thanks
Ravi S
Make sure you are specifying the properties file as the payload for the exe and not for the bootstrapper. For example, in your bundle, your chain may look something like this:
<Chain>
<MsiPackage SourceFile="MyInstaller.msi" Id="MyInstaller" Cache="yes"/>
<ExePackage SourceFile="MyExe.exe" Id="MyExe" Cache="yes">
<Payload SourceFile="OtherFile.properties" Id="Properties"/>
</ExePackage>
</Chain>
Also, as a sanity check, which version of WiX are you using? If you are using an older build (such as RC0), you could try updating to the latest weekly build.
Update:
In WiX 3.6 it does not appear that you can get the absolute path of a payload file. There are two bugs/feature request open right now regarding the issue that are deferred to WiX 3.7:
Add burn variable to cache path - ID: 3557446
Change working folder to the cache folder - ID: 3538846
One workaround would be to use burn to write your own bootstrapper application and then programmatically determine the working directory and set the appropriate parameters, but that would be a lot of work for this one issue.
My installer has to copy files into installdir... My application has around 2000 files and it is not possible for me to write the script to add each and every file to the installer.
Is there any option in wix so that I can add all the files or the entire folder consisting the files at once? I am new to wix and i didnt find any option in any tutorial for this... Please do assist me and thanks in advance.....
Heat is the WiX harvest tool. You can run it on a directory to generate the necessary WiX source code.
EDIT:
If you want to run heat before your VS project builds, add it to your project prebuild events as seen in the screenshot below (this is how I have my project setup to dynamically generate WiX source for our ever changing help content):
Note the -var wix.HelpSource switch that I have. The WiX source files generated by heat will set the location of the source files to that variable instead of hard-coding it. So the generated source will have components that look something like this:
<Component Id="Welcome.htm" Directory="Content" Guid="INSERT-GUID-HERE">
<File Id="Welcome.htm" KeyPath="yes" Source="!(wix.HelpSource)\Content\Welcome.htm" />
</Component>
And in my particular case, I define that variable on the Tool Settings screen of my WiX VS project to the relative directory ..\..\Help\Output as seen below:
NOTE: Harvesting files in this manner will cause the GUIDs of the components harvested to change every time you build. If you don't want your GUIDs to change, you may have to write some wrapper that calls heat to harvest the files, then updates your original WiX source, leaving all the GUIDs alone.
I am using Heat.exe to harvest a directory containing my DLLs that need to go into the GAC. The fragment is correctly created and I can build my MSI. The problem I am having is that after the wxs source file is created I have to manually edit the file adding the File/#Assembly =".net" attribute.
Is there a way to have heat include Assembly=".net" for each File when using heat.exe from the command line?
Using WiX 3.0.
There's no ad hoc attribute for this, probably because you can have your own rules, which files need this attribute, and which do not.
However, you can apply XSLT transform to the heat output and adjust the resulting XML (WXS file) the way you need. Take a look at -t:<xsl> switch for more details.
I'm using Visual Studio to build my wix file. So far I have one file Product.wxs and it's working for a simple install.
Now I want to add some custom dialogs. I think from the two articles below, I understand how to do it - after I get my environment set up:
http://blog.torresdal.net/2008/10/24/WiXAndDTFUsingACustomActionToListAvailableWebSitesOnIIS.aspx
and
http://www.merlinia.com/mdt/WiXTutorial2.msl
I downloaded the source, and I see 35 *.wxs file in this directory
wix35-sources.zip\src\ext\UIExtension\wixlib
This is where I'm starting to get lost.
Do I need to copy some (only the ones I want to change) or all these files to my Visual Studio Project. Until now, I have been running with none of these source files.
How does my Product.wxs know to use these files? Does it look at local directory first? Or do I have to rebuild some C# modules?
I included these lines in my Product.wxs, and it gave me the user interface at execution time:
<UIRef Id="WixUI_Mondo" />
<UIRef Id="WixUI_ErrorProgressText" />
Thanks,
Neal
Do I need to copy some (only the ones I want to change) or all these files to
my VisualStudio Project. Until now, I have been running with none of these source files.
Since you are already using WixUI_Mondo, I assume you want to customize that UI. Locate WixUI_Mondo.wxs in the wix sources, and copy that to your visual studio project. Rename the file to WixUI_MyCustomUI.wxs and change the UI Id attribute inside the file to Id="WixUI_MyCustomUI". You don't need to copy any other files yet; the dialogs referenced in the copied UI sequence are compiled into the wix tools as resources, so wix "knows" these dialogs by name.
In your product.wxs file, change the UI reference to <UIRef Id="WixUI_MyCustomUI" />. If you now rebuild your setup, the UI should still look exactly as WixUI_Mondo as we haven't customized anything yet.
If that worked, you'll probably want to customize or add a dialog. Again, you can start from an existing dialog by copying it from the wix sources. You'll also have to edit the WixUI_MyCustomUI.wxs file so that it uses your new dialog. Take a look at this other answer I wrote for an example.
How does my Product.wxs know to use
these files? Does it look at local
directory first? Or do I have to
rebuild some C# modules?
You do not have rebuild any C# modules. The only reason you downloaded the wix sources is because the existing UI sequences and dialogs are good examples to start from. In principle you could also ignore the wix sources and write these wxs files for the UI sequence and dialog definitions from scratch.
When you use the command line tools, you combine multiple wxs files by simply passing multiple file arguments and they will be compiled and linked together. If you use wix with visual studio, you just have to add the wxs file to the project. A non-trivial wix setup will typically be defined by many wxs files.
The content of a wxs file can container references to elements in other wxs files through elements such as UIRef, ComponentRef, ComponentGroupRef, DirectoryRef etcetera.