Tallow (for WiX 2.0) and Heat (for WiX 3.0) are the standard ways of creating WiX authoring based on existing data like directories full of files and such.
Note that to do this the "right" way is somewhat non-trivial. The thing about WI is that you shouldn't be changing component GUIDs all the time for files that you've previously installed, so you don't necessarily want to regenerating your authoring from scratch every time. As I recall, Tallow sidesteps this issue by not creating GUIDs for your components and making you do that by hand (or with some sort of script you write). It isn't an easy problem to solve. Another thing you might consider doing is generating the authoring dynamically from the existing source for the initial build and then just tweaking the authoring by hand thereafter. Typically, this isn't too hard to keep on top of if you do it as you go. Other people on this list have created some really sophisticated build systems that do automate this task while keeping track of existing components and such. There is probably a significant investment in time to get something like this, but it might pay off. Perhaps someone else will share their solution. The email archives probably have some pointers as well. Joe K. ----- Original Message ----- From: David Keaveny To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 8:30 PM Subject: [WiX-users] WiX and web applications Is there an equivalent in WiX to Visual Studio 2003's web deployment project? In other words, a simple way of adding all the .ascx, .config, .jpg etc files to my MSI without having to hand-code each individual entry? VS can take the output from a project, and build an MSI from that; I don't see an obvious way to do it in WiX. I've had no problem with WiX for packaging Windows services, since the file counts are relatively low; but my web application contains hundreds of files, and is under constant development, so there must be some way of automating things. Regards, David ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys -- and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys -- and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
