Book Image

WiX 3.6: A Developer's Guide to Windows Installer XML

Book Image

WiX 3.6: A Developer's Guide to Windows Installer XML

Overview of this book

The cryptic science of Windows Installer can seem far off from the practical task of simply getting something installed. Luckily, we have WiX to simplify the matter. WiX is an XML markup, distributed with an open-source compiler and linker, used to produce a Windows Installer package. It is used by Microsoft and by countless other companies around the world to simplify deployments. "WiX 3.6: A Developer's Guide to Windows Installer XML" promises a friendly welcome into the world of Windows Installer. Starting off with a simple, practical example and continuing on with increasingly advanced scenarios, the reader will have a well-rounded education by book's end. With the help of this book, you'll understand your installer better, create it in less time, and save money in the process. No one really wants to devote a lifetime to understanding how to create a hassle-free installer. Learn to build a sophisticated deployment solution targeting the Windows platform in no time with this hands-on practical guide. Here we speed you through the basics and zoom right into the advanced. You'll get comfortable with components, features, conditions and actions. By the end, you'll be boasting your latest deployment victories at the local pub. Once you've finished "WiX 3.6: A Developer's Guide to Windows Installer XML", you'll realize just how powerful and awesome an installer can really be.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
WiX 3.6: A Developer's Guide to Windows Installer XML
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

ICE20 revisited


ICE20 is the validation check that makes sure you have the necessary dialogs defined to handle things such as showing a friendly message when the user cancels the install. We initially suppressed this check in the project's properties. Now, let's remove that suppression and add these dialogs. Note that all are defined in the WiX source files and you may find it easier to simply copy them to your project.

We need to define five dialogs: FilesInUse, Error, FatalError, UserExit, and Exit.

FilesInUse

The FilesInUse dialog allows the user to shut down applications that are accessing files the installer needs to update or delete. The MSI finds this dialog by looking in the MSI Dialog table for a dialog with an Id attribute of FilesInUse. So, in our new WiX source file, the Dialog element's Id attribute must match this name. The FilesInUseDlg.wxs file will look like the following snippet:

<?xml version=»1.0» encoding=»UTF-8»?>
<Wix xmlns=»http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix...