Thanks for all the suggestions everyone, lots for me to go and look at. Neil
________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jason Swager [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 11, 2008 6:05 AM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Automating the inclusion of a mess of files You may want to look at Paraffin (http://www.wintellect.com/CS/blogs/jrobbins/archive/2007/10/21/wix-a-better-tallow-paraffin.aspx). This tool was designed for WiX 2.0, so you have to WiXCop the resulting file if you use WiX 3.0. Paraffin handles much of the GUID generation and updating for you. For maintaining large directories of non-binary files where additions and removals are common, this tool works very well for me. I just wish it generated WiX 3.0 code.... Jason Swager ----- Original Message ---- From: Neil Enns <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. <wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net> Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 11:01:30 PM Subject: [WiX-users] Automating the inclusion of a mess of files My application will wind up shipping with a ton of loose resource files on disk*. We will have several items with the following well-defined structure: MyFile1.foo MyFile1_files \ 0 \ somefile.txt \ 1 \ somefile.txt ... \ 9 \ somefile.txt This is how the files live on disk as source, and how we need them to live on disk on the target machine. As you can imagine, I have no desire to author the WiX to install these suckers by hand, especially since they're going to change relatively often between now and when we ship. I want to automate the process somehow. I started tonight by thinking a custom extension would do. My plan was to create a new <MyFile> element that took the root .foo file, then would automatically add all the necessary entries into the MSI for all the files and subdirectories. I got a custom extension up and running pretty quickly, but when it came time to actually think about adding the things to the MSI this approach seemed, well, insane. I have no desire to recreate what the <File>, <Directory>, and <Component> elements do in code. My new alternate approach is to do this via a custom MSBuild task that runs before Candle and generates a WiX file that then gets added to the list of things to compile. Anyone have any other suggestions for good ways to automate this? Thanks, Neil * Don't ask why we have this structure and why they are loose files. It's a very long story best told over a frosty beverage. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sponsored by: SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards: VOTE NOW! Studies have shown that voting for your favorite open source project, along with a healthy diet, reduces your potential for chronic lameness and boredom. Vote Now at http://www.sourceforge.net/community/cca08 _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sponsored by: SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards: VOTE NOW! Studies have shown that voting for your favorite open source project, along with a healthy diet, reduces your potential for chronic lameness and boredom. Vote Now at http://www.sourceforge.net/community/cca08 _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sponsored by: SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards: VOTE NOW! Studies have shown that voting for your favorite open source project, along with a healthy diet, reduces your potential for chronic lameness and boredom. Vote Now at http://www.sourceforge.net/community/cca08 _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
