I have a small window of time to "convert" our 6 IS installs to WiX. We have ~15 "features" installed by the 6 msi. Some are single feature installs, others have 2-7 "features". None of them has an elaborate UI sequence, and I don't have to deal with prereq installation just simple LaunchCondition and/or AppSearch type checks.
I think it makes the most sense to make a wixlib for each feature. And, then, include those wixlibs into 6 installer projects (which will maintain the UI, sequencing, custom actions, properties, LaunchConditions, AppSearch, etc.). I'm sure this approach is nothing new and is probably one of the 'recommended' patterns to follow on larger deployments I'd like to take this a step further and try to make use of project references, harvest (heat) to make building the wixlibs a bit more "automatic". I've used standalone heat.exe in the past but it was used on a special installer in which it was the perfect solution. I don't recall project references or project references with a 'harvest' property being available when I last used WiX (~3 years ago). I have skimmed through the documentation, but I'm not real clear how I can go about using the project references to build my component list for each wixlib. Is that process documented somewhere? If not, I have a couple more questions... 1. How is the "Harvest == true/false" project reference property used? I set to true in my "Hello, World" installer and I don't see any magic occurring. 2. What files are "harvested" from the reference if/when I get #1 to work? 3. Assuming I get #1 to work, what is the best approach for adding third party dlls to a wixlib, do I just add a separate hidden sub-feature "Third Party Stuff" and is manually maintained in one of the wixlib's .wxs files? Or is there some other suggested method? NOTE: We are using WiX3.7, VS2012 and TFS2012 for builds. Our build template simply "runs" our "OneSolutionToRuleThemAll" with Release/AnyCPU. Which is the same solution the Dev team uses to build a local release build (if they desire). Thanks, -- Tony ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ October Webinars: Code for Performance Free Intel webinars can help you accelerate application performance. Explore tips for MPI, OpenMP, advanced profiling, and more. Get the most from the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See abstracts and register > http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=60135991&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
