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  • Book Overview & Buying WiX Cookbook
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WiX Cookbook

WiX Cookbook

By : Nicholas Matthew Ramirez
3.5 (10)
Buy this Book
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WiX Cookbook

WiX Cookbook

3.5 (10)
By: Nicholas Matthew Ramirez
Buy this Book

Overview of this book

WiX is a dialect of XML used to make installers for Windows. Its declarative style avoids the complexity and limitations of procedural code, providing you with everything you need to package up an entire application into a single MSI file. This book gives you a good overview of WiX's capabilities to develop your own installer packages with functionalities beyond those available in Windows Installer. In the recipes of this book, you will see ways in which WiX can cut down on your installation time and help you streamline your deployment processes. You will see how to make customized installer UIs, write custom actions, create shortcuts, and also set your application as the default for a file type.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
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Preface
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Preface
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What this book covers
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What you need for this book
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Who this book is for
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Conventions
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Reader feedback
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Customer support
Lock Free Chapter
1
1. Organizing and Building WiX Projects
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1. Organizing and Building WiX Projects
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Introduction
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Installing WiX and creating a new project in Visual Studio 2013
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Referencing the output of a .NET console application in a WiX project by using a preprocessor variable
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Separating a portion of WIX markup into its own library
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Compiling a WiX installer on a build machine using MSBuild
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Building a WiX installer from the command line
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2. Installing Files and Directories
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2. Installing Files and Directories
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Introduction
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Installing directories onto the target computer
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Adding a file to a directory
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Installing a 64-bit executable file to Program Files
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Including one component or another depending on the condition
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Using the heat.exe tool to generate components
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3. File and Folder Permissions
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3. File and Folder Permissions
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Introduction
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Changing the permissions on a folder for a user
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Changing the permissions on a file for a user
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Marking a file as read only
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Creating a file share
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Setting the default program for a file type
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4. Shortcuts
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4. Shortcuts
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Introduction
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Adding an application shortcut to the Start menu
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Adding an icon to a shortcut
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Placing a shortcut on the desktop
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Creating a shortcut to a folder
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Creating an advertised shortcut that installs a feature on demand
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5. Editing XML Files during Installation
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5. Editing XML Files during Installation
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Introduction
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Adding a new element to an XML file during installation
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Setting the value of an attribute on an XML element
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Inserting inner text into an XML element
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Adding an XML element only if it does not already exist
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Removing an XML element
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6. Custom Actions
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6. Custom Actions
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Introduction
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Creating a C# custom action and referencing it in your project
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Passing information entered by a user to a deferred custom action
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Preventing custom action data from being displayed in the install log
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Running an executable as a custom action without showing a console window by using CAQuietExec
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Testing rollback custom actions with WixFailWhenDeferred
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7. Installing Wizards
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7. Installing Wizards
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Introduction
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Adding a wizard to guide users through the installation
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Changing the logo images and default license agreement text of the wizard
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Customizing the wizard by adding a new dialog window to it
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Deciding which dialog to show next depending on the user's choices
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Setting a property based on user input
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8. Users and Groups
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8. Users and Groups
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Introduction
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Creating a local user
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Adding a new user to a new group
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Adding a new user to an existing group
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Adding an existing user to a new group
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Adding a new user with the log on as a service security setting
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9. Handling Prerequisites
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9. Handling Prerequisites
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Introduction
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Stopping the installation with a launch condition
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Installing only to supported versions of Windows
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Redistributing the .NET Framework with a bootstrapper
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Executing either a 64-bit or 32-bit MSI depending on the user's operating system
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Downloading resources from the Web with a web installer
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10. Installing Websites
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10. Installing Websites
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Introduction
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Spinning up a new application pool in IIS
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Adding a website to IIS that runs under your app pool
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Creating a virtual directory
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Adding a web application to IIS
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Setting up a website to use SSL
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11. Linking to the Web
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11. Linking to the Web
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Introduction
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Adding a hyperlink control to a wizard dialog
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Opening an installed HTML file after a successful installation
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Launching a web page when a user uninstalls our software
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Installing a shortcut that opens a web page
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Updating programs and features to show a link to our company's website
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12. Installing SQL Server Databases
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12. Installing SQL Server Databases
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Introduction
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Installing a SQL Server instance with a bootstrapper
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Adding a database to a SQL Server instance
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Creating a table within a SQL Server database
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Inserting data into a database table
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Creating an ODBC data source for a SQL Server instance
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13. Admin Tasks
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13. Admin Tasks
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Introduction
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Setting an environment variable
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Creating a scheduled task
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Defining a new event source for the Windows event viewer
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Registering a performance counter
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Adding an exception to Windows Firewall
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Index
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Index

Compiling a WiX installer on a build machine using MSBuild

The WiX Toolset places its compiler and linker in C:\Program Files (x86)\WiX Toolset v3.9\bin. This is fine when compiling on your own machine but becomes a concern when you'd like to share your project with others or have it compile on a build server. WiX will have to be installed on each computer that builds the project.

Alternatively, we can store the WiX tools in source control, and then whoever needs to build a setup project can get everything they need by cloning the repository. This will also help us keep a handle on which version of WiX we're compiling against on a project-by-project basis.

In this recipe, we'll store the WiX binaries in a fictitious source control directory on the C: drive. We'll then update the .wixproj file of a setup project to use the MSBuild tasks stored there. I will be using a server with the Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system installed on it. You should be able to follow along with other versions of Windows Server.

Getting ready

To prepare for this recipe, perform the following steps:

  1. Install the .NET Framework 3.5. It's needed by the WiX build tasks. In Windows Server 2012 R2, it can be installed as a feature within Server Manager:
    Getting ready
  2. Next, we'll need the MSBuild engine, which is part of Microsoft Build Tools. It can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40760.
  3. After installing MSBuild, add its installation directory to the computer's PATH environment variable. Get there by right-clicking on This PC in file explorer and then going to Properties | Advanced system settings | Environment Variables.... Scroll through the list of system variables until you find the one labeled Path. Highlight it, click on Edit..., and then add the path to the MSBuild directory into the Variable value field, preceded by a semicolon. Then, click on OK:
    Getting ready

How to do it…

Download the WiX binaries and update your setup project to use the included MSBuild tasks:

  1. Open a browser, navigate to http://www.wixtoolset.org, and follow the link to the downloads page. Download wix39-binaries.zip:
    How to do it…
  2. Make sure that the ZIP file is unblocked by right-clicking on it, choosing Properties, clicking on Unblock (if you don't see it, just continue to the next step), and then on OK.
  3. Extract the contents of the ZIP file to C:\SourceControl\WiX39. Perform this step on both the server and on your own development computer so that our WiX projects can be built in both places using the MSBuild tasks from this folder (note that in a real-world scenario, our source control system would be responsible for copying the binaries to each computer):
    How to do it…
  4. We will build a simple setup project to confirm that we've got everything on the server configured correctly. Create a setup project on your development machine and call it BuildMachineInstaller.
  5. Open the BuildMachineInstaller.wixproj file and add the WixToolPath, WixTargetsPath, and WixTasksPath properties as shown, making sure that the value of WixToolPath ends in a backslash:
    <PropertyGroup>
    <Configuration Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == '' ">Debug</Configuration>
    <Platform Condition=" '$(Platform)' == '' ">x86</Platform>
    <ProductVersion>3.9</ProductVersion>
    <ProjectGuid>f80ca9fc-8e42-406e-92f9-06e484e94d67</ProjectGuid>
    <SchemaVersion>2.0</SchemaVersion>
    <OutputName>BuildMachineInstaller</OutputName>
    <OutputType>Package</OutputType>
    <WixToolPath>C:\SourceControl\WiX39\</WixToolPath>
    <WixTargetsPath>$(WixToolPath)wix.targets</WixTargetsPath>
    <WixTasksPath>$(WixToolPath)WixTasks.dll</WixTasksPath>
    <WixTargetsPath Condition=" '$(WixTargetsPath)' == '' AND '$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)' != '' ">$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\WiX\v3.x\Wix.targets</WixTargetsPath>
    <WixTargetsPath Condition=" '$(WixTargetsPath)' == '' ">$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\WiX\v3.x\Wix.targets</WixTargetsPath>
</PropertyGroup>
  6. Copy the BuildMachineInstaller solution folder and all of its subfolders to C:\SourceControl on the build server.
  7. Open a command prompt via Run | cmd, execute the following commands to change the directory to the BuildMachineInstaller folder and compile the solution using MSBuild:
    cd C:\SourceControl\BuildMachineInstaller

msbuild BuildMachineInstaller.sln

How it works…

We started with a blank slate of a freshly installed Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system. Therefore, we had to install all the required software including .NET Framework 3.5 and Microsoft Build Tools 2013. The latter gives us the MSBuild engine, whose path we included in the computer's PATH environment variable.

Next, we downloaded the WiX binaries and copied them to C:\SourceControl. With a source control system, these files could be shared among all computers that need to compile our setup projects. We also had to update our project's .wixproj file so that it knew where to find these WiX binaries. This is accomplished by adding three MSBuild properties: WixToolPath, WixTargetsPath, and WixTasksPath. The first property sets the path to the WiX binaries, the second to the wix.targets file, and the third to WixTasks.dll. With all of this setup out of the way, we opened a command prompt, navigated to the folder where our solution file was on the build server, and compiled it using MSBuild.

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