If I'm understanding correctly, you're referring to that you see Visual Studio calling candle and light when it compiles your WiX setup project?
At that time, it's calling those tools on your setup project, but your custom extension project has already been compiled. By adding a reference to it in your project, WiX will add an -ext MyCustomExtension.dll to the call to candle. It's the same as if you'd added a reference to WiXUtilExtension, for example. The -ext pulls in the extension, but it doesn't compile it -- since it's already compiled code. I think you've already done this, but first, get the source code from the book at http://www.packtpub.com/support/10788. I just did and tried it myself. The steps I followed were: 1. Download source for that chapter 2. Open the solution in Visual Studio (I just download WiX 3.8, so I had to update the reference to wix.dll that's in the extension project to point at the new location for that DLL) 3. Compile the WIXLIB project 4. Compile the custom action project 5. Compile the extension project (since it relies on the first two) 6. Copy the ouput DLL from the extension project to a WiX setup project's project directory (for easy access) 7. In the WiX setup, add that DLL as a project reference 8. Add the XMLNS to the Wix element: xmlns:awesome="http://www.mydomain.com/AwesomeSchema"; 9. Add the new element inside the Product: <awesome:SuperElement Id="MyCustomElement" Type="Super" /> 10. Compile the setup project. That worked for me. Does it for you? I'm using Visual Studio 2013 and WiX 3.8. -- View this message in context: http://windows-installer-xml-wix-toolset.687559.n2.nabble.com/Noob-creating-a-Custom-Action-in-Wix-3-8-tp7593140p7593180.html Sent from the wix-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subversion Kills Productivity. Get off Subversion & Make the Move to Perforce. With Perforce, you get hassle-free workflows. Merge that actually works. Faster operations. Version large binaries. Built-in WAN optimization and the freedom to use Git, Perforce or both. Make the move to Perforce. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=122218951&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
