"Merge modules are processed by mergemod.dll (a special dll from the Windows SDK), so WiX has very little interaction with the contents of merge modules being put in your MSI file. This is one of the reasons we advise against using merge modules – they are a black box that you either take or leave in their entirety. Even if you build merge modules for an external customer, you can also create wixlibs (or just straight wixobjs) from the authoring in the merge module for internal usage. Basically, you should only use merge modules from external groups and only ship merge modules to external customers. Merge modules are good for sharing across different organizations because you might not both be using WiX (or the same version of WiX), but within an organization, the wixlib files are the way to go. "
Ok, so I understand that wixlibs are preferrable....
That leaves 2 major questions:
1. Where is the documentation for libs?
2. Is there a tool for inspecting wixlibs similar to ORCA? If not, is this something planned for the future?
On 7/31/06, Shmarya Rubenstein <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi all,
This question has come up a couple of times in the last couple of days on various threads... but I'm still a little confused.
Which should be used when: MergeModules or WixLib?
So far as I understand these are the charactheristics:
MergeModules:
- Standard MSI object
- 'hard' linked by light
- self contained (except for <Dependency/>s)
- powerful <Dependency/> mechanism which allows many-to-many dependency relationships similar to most code dependencies.
* can be inspected/viewed using ORCA
- can be easily distributed
- contains compressed binaries
WixLib
- proprietary wix format
- 'soft' linked by lit (what does this mean exactly?)
- "sort-of" self-contained (not sure of the exact constraints)
- dependency is left to the regular Component (many-to-many?) and Feature (one-to-many) mechanisms
* no way to inspect wixlib files...
- can contain binaries (in 3.0)
My big concerns are the visibility (ORCA) and dependency mechanisms, although distributabilty is also important.
Am I missing something? Some bigger picture perhaps?
Thanks,--
Shmarya
-----------------------------------------------------------
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://shmarya.net
NUnit rocks! http://nunit.com
--
Shmarya
-----------------------------------------------------------
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://shmarya.net
NUnit rocks! http://nunit.com
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