A blog by Devendra Tewari
Now that Visual Studio has dropped support for creating installers, I have taken to studying the WiX Toolset quite earnestly. Manually editing the WiX script is all right as long you have a handful of files. A particular installer I am working on has over nine hundred. I need to bundle the Node.js executable along with all the modules.
A quick look at the WiX documentation revealed the heat tool, that when executed thus produces a script file with elements that we can copy and paste into your wxs
"c:\Program Files (x86)\WiX Toolset v3.6\bin\heat.exe" dir . -o out.wxs -cg MyComponentGroup -sfrag -gg -g1
The dir option followed by a . tells heat to gather the directory structure (source file) information from the current folder and its children. The cg option tells it to create a ComponentGroup with an id of MyComponentGroup. The sfrag option tells it to suppress wrapping individual directories and components in a Fragment element. The gg and g1 options tell it to generate GUIDs for the components, but without the curly braces.
The Component elements can be copied from within the TARGETDIR DirectoryRef element in out.wxs to the target wxs. Similarly, the list of ComponentRef elements in the MyComponentGroup ComponentGroup can be copied into the Feature element of the target wxs.
The following installer script can serve as a starting point for your installer. It does several things
Install files and folders to User’s Local AppData folder
Add shortcut to node.exe in the Start menu and on the Desktop
Add a shortcut to uninstall the app in the Start menu
Uninstall older version when upgrading
Allow killing node.exe during uninstall if it is in execution
Customizing the icons and bitmaps that appear in the installer UI
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Wix xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/wi"
xmlns:util="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/UtilExtension">
<Product Id="*"
UpgradeCode="UpgradeCodeGuidHere"
Version="1.0.0.0"
Language="1033"
Name="My Demo App"
Manufacturer="My Demo App Inc">
<Package InstallerVersion="300" Compressed="yes"/>
<Media Id="1" Cabinet="myapp.cab" EmbedCab="yes" />
<Directory Id="TARGETDIR" Name="SourceDir">
<Directory Id="LocalAppDataFolder">
<Directory Id="ApplicationRootDirectory" Name="My Demo App"/>
</Directory>
<Directory Id="ProgramMenuFolder">
<Directory Id="ApplicationStartMenuDirectory" Name="My Demo App"/>
</Directory>
<Directory Id="DesktopFolder" Name="Desktop" />
</Directory>
<DirectoryRef Id="ApplicationRootDirectory">
<Component Id="cmp682D63F52C6A923093FEEB4843C1FC57" Guid="guid">
<File Id="filF0E5F101F1A0BB7301C185E556B17884" KeyPath="yes" Source="SourceDir\LICENSE.rtf" />
</Component>
<Directory Id="dir5C9B5A0C45E6936E7334A1337C6A9713" Name="node">
<Component Id="cmpF3997DF7D71AE597262E9BD72AAAD3C7" Guid="guid">
<File Id="fil033B52E95F09B7F012231C998D1CAF39" KeyPath="yes" Source="SourceDir\node\node.exe" />
<RemoveFolder Id='ApplicationRootDirectory' On='uninstall' />
</Component>
<Component Id="cmp38789F507892CB5C87E1B0156C91C74C" Guid="guid">
<File Id="filF09913762744568C85CCB592BE253DC0" KeyPath="yes" Source="SourceDir\node\main.js" />
</Component>
</Directory>
</DirectoryRef>
<Icon Id="icon.ico" SourceFile="icon.ico"/>
<DirectoryRef Id="ApplicationStartMenuDirectory">
<Component Id="ApplicationShortcuts" Guid="guid">
<Shortcut Id="ApplicationStartMenuShortcut"
Name="My Demo App"
Directory="ApplicationStartMenuDirectory"
Target="[ApplicationRootDirectory]node.exe"
Arguments="main.js"
WorkingDirectory="dir5C9B5A0C45E6936E7334A1337C6A9713"
Icon="icon.ico"/>
<Shortcut Id="ApplicationDesktopShortcut"
Name="My Demo App"
Directory="DesktopFolder"
Target="[ApplicationRootDirectory]node.exe"
Arguments="main.js"
WorkingDirectory="dir5C9B5A0C45E6936E7334A1337C6A9713"
Icon="icon.ico"/>
<Shortcut Id="ApplicationFolderShortcut"
Name="Installation Folder"
Directory="ApplicationStartMenuDirectory"
Target="[ApplicationRootDirectory]"/>
<Shortcut Id="ApplicationUninstallShortcut"
Name="Uninstall My Demo App"
Directory="ApplicationStartMenuDirectory"
Target="[SystemFolder]msiexec.exe"
Arguments="/x [ProductCode]"/>
<RemoveFolder Id="ApplicationStartMenuDirectory" On="uninstall"/>
<RegistryValue Root="HKCU" Key="Software\My Demo App Inc\My Demo App" Name="installed" Type="integer" Value="1" KeyPath="yes"/>
</Component>
</DirectoryRef>
<Feature Id="MainApplication" Title="Main Application" Level="1">
<ComponentRef Id="cmp682D63F52C6A923093FEEB4843C1FC57" />
<ComponentRef Id="cmpF3997DF7D71AE597262E9BD72AAAD3C7" />
<ComponentRef Id="cmp38789F507892CB5C87E1B0156C91C74C" />
<ComponentRef Id="ApplicationShortcuts" />
</Feature>
<WixVariable Id="WixUILicenseRtf" Value="LICENSE.rtf" />
<!--WixVariable Id="WixUIBannerBmp" Value="bmp" /--> <!-- 493 X 58 -->
<!--WixVariable Id="WixUIDialogBmp" Value="bmp" /--> <!-- 493 X 312 -->
<Property Id="ARPPRODUCTICON" Value="icon.ico" />
<Property Id="WixAppFolder" Value="WixPerUserFolder" />
<UIRef Id="WixUI_Minimal" />
<Upgrade Id="UpgradeCodeGuidHere">
<UpgradeVersion
Minimum="1.0.0.0" Maximum="99.0.0.0"
Property="PREVIOUSVERSIONSINSTALLED"
IncludeMinimum="yes" IncludeMaximum="no" />
</Upgrade>
<InstallExecuteSequence>
<RemoveExistingProducts After="InstallInitialize" />
</InstallExecuteSequence>
<util:CloseApplication Id="CloseApplication" Target="[dir5C9B5A0C45E6936E7334A1337C6A9713]node.exe"/>
</Product>
</Wix>
Remember to replace UpgradeCodeGuidHere with a valid GUID. GUIDs can be generated by executing guidgen.exe from Visual Studio’s Developer Command Prompt. Choose the registry format and remove the braces. There are also quite a few online GUID generators.
To compile the above script using the WiX compiler, execute
candle.exe demo.wxs -ext WixUtilExtension
To link the object file produced by the compiler and create an msi, execute
light.exe -out demo.msi demo.wixobj -ext WixUIExtension -ext WixUtilExtension
You can put both steps in a batch file
set WIX_BIN=c:\Program Files (x86)\WiX Toolset v3.6\bin\
echo Wix Toolset Bin Path: %WIX_BIN%
"%WIX_BIN%candle.exe" demo.wxs -ext WixUtilExtension
if exist demo.wixobj (
"%WIX_BIN%light.exe" -out demo.msi demo.wixobj -ext WixUIExtension -ext WixUtilExtension
)