What this book covers

Chapter 1, Organizing and Building WiX Projects, helps you to build your WiX projects right, whether that means from Visual Studio, the command line, or on a build server with automation. We'll also see how to reference the output of other projects that will be included in the installer and how to separate WiX markup into libraries.

Chapter 2, Installing Files and Directories, covers creating folders and files on the end user's computer. We'll also see how to get heat.exe to generate this sort of markup for us and how to make decisions during installation about which files to create.

Chapter 3, File and Folder Permissions, introduces recipes to set the permissions on installed files and folders. We'll also see how to create file shares and choose a default program to use when opening a custom file type.

Chapter 4, Shortcuts, digs into all things related to shortcuts. We'll see how to put an icon on a shortcut, point a shortcut to a folder, as well as place a shortcut in the most popular places: the Start menu and the desktop. We'll also touch on how to create an advertised shortcut that will give users the ability to install features on demand.

Chapter 5, Editing XML Files during Installation, will come in handy especially when altering XML-based configuration files for your software. We'll add XML elements, remove them, set attributes, and insert inner text as part of our installation.

Chapter 6, Custom Actions, focuses on making well-behaved custom actions to extend the WiX functionality. We'll see how to protect the privacy of data sent to custom actions and open console windows without showing them, and rollback failures.

Chapter 7, Installing Wizards, puts a face on our installer by plugging in one of the wizards that comes with the WiX toolset. We'll then see how to customize it with our own images, license, and dialogs.

Chapter 8, Users and Groups, discusses adding users and groups to the target computer. We'll also see how to marry the two by adding users to groups and grant users the log on as a service security setting.

Chapter 9, Handling Prerequisites, includes tactics to only install our software to systems that can support it. We'll examine ways to stop an installation if prerequisites aren't met, install .NET Framework if it's missing, and download resources from the web during installation.

Chapter 10, Installing Websites, explores adding sites to IIS. We'll cover application pools, websites, virtual directories, and web applications. We'll then top it off with a recipe to secure a website with SSL.

Chapter 11, Linking to the Web, connects our installer to online resources. We'll see how to open web pages, display hyperlinks, and install shortcuts to websites.

Chapter 12, Installing SQL Server Databases, is dedicated to recipes about deploying SQL Server databases. If SQL Server isn't already installed on the target computer, we can install it with a bootstrapper. We'll add tables, insert data, and register an ODBC data source.

Chapter 13, Admin Tasks, rounds up a collection of administrative chores, including installing scheduled tasks, adding event sources, registering performance counters, and adding exceptions to the Windows firewall.