WiX

Rob Mensching writes in a post that WiX has an online manual for version 2 and that eventually a manual for version 3 will show up.

My last post showed how to use VBScript functions as CustomActions. More than often you need to access some of the properties you have defined in your WIX files, for example an installation directory, a connection string etc.To access these properties just use the Session object and it’s a Property property.Here’s an example with two properties used: set adam = GetObject(Session.Property("ADSERVER") & "/" & Session.Property("ADSPATH")) The WIX file should contain two properties: <Property Id="ADSERVER" Admin="yes" >LDAP://server</Property><Property Id="ADSPATH" Admin="yes" ></Property> The Property property is read/write so you can manipulate the properties within your code.

Here are some small tips when using VBScript CustomActions using WIX.Creating a script CustomActionFirst of all you have to create a CustomAction in your WXS file: <CustomAction Id="Id_Of_ScriptAction" BinaryKey="Id_of_binary" VBScriptCall="Script_Name" /> Id_Of_ScriptAction is a unique Id of your CustomActionID_of_binary is the unique Id of the binary that contains the vbs file.Script_Name is the name of the Sub or Function in your vbs file. Creating the VBS fileCreate a .VBS file with a function or sub that should be executed.

I have for a few interesting weeks been using Microsoft Windows Installer Xml, aka WIX, to create an MSI installer for our software solution (finally the number of installation has increased so it was worth it :-).Our software is higly configurable and modularized so I needed to use a tool more advanced that the built-in installers in Visual Studio.Net - and the choice was to use WIX. For you out there who doesn’t know what WIX is then the short story is that; WIX is toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code. The source code and binaries to WIX can be found on SourceForge.To create an MSI you just tap in some XML code and use the provided compilers and linkers and you are up and running in a few minutes - with a simple installation package.Bur, when making a more complex installer you will probably run into trouble due to the lack of documentation on the subject, even if it contains a nice help file I found out that Google was the best source of documentation.I ran into some troubles when I was creating CustomActions and I thought I would write a more thorough article about that in a near future. I found out that making CustomActions using scripts (VB and JavaScript) was really successfull.Are you interested in reading more about WIX check out the blog of Rob Mensching or this great tutorial by Gábor Deák Jahn. What do you think about WIX?And finally: congratulations to the WIX project which celebrates two year anniversary today.