Definitely possible, I've just finished migrating to a system where our developers can build installers themselves. I found Nant really easy to get my head around, first got the MSI package itself being built by a single command and then just expanded from there.
A simplified version of my installer build process goes something like this... - Copy all binaries to a "temp" folder - Figure out what version number to use - Sign everything with signtool - Call candle/light - Sign the MSI - Build a bootstrapper - Sign the bootstrapper - "Release" bootstrapper+MSI Any developer can check out the code from CVS and build 64 and 32 bit installers with a single click. Providing they have WiX 3 installed and the nant executable in their path somewhere of course :) We don't use heat to harvest anything during this process, it's up to myself or the developers to ensure new files/components/features/etc are added to the .wxs files. We're only trying to automate the build, not the maintenance. Additionally we manually update product codes with each major release, which prevents interim beta builds from being installed over top of each other. This works well for us as we want our testing team to be replicating customer environments - i.e. upgrading from a previous public release, or installing fresh. However generating automatic major-ugprades and harvesting content using heat is also possible if you want to do a heavily automated nightly build type system. If you want some example code, it's probably getting a bit off-topic for this list so just flick me an email off list and I'll be happy to help you out :) On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 5:09 AM, Brian Rogers <rogers.br...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hey Jim, > > Many people are doing this and it is possible. I believe you need to look at > how much automation you are looking to have. You can also use heat.exe to > harvest content. It all comes down to how you want to service your MSI once > it is created. If you only intend to have major upgrades only it removes a > lot of the very difficult logistics you need to battle if you want to be > able to create patches dynamically. > > Thanks, > > Brian Rogers > "Intelligence removes complexity." - Me > http://icumove.spaces.live.com > > > On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 11:57 AM, Rob Mensching <r...@wixtoolset.org> wrote: > >> Yeah, that's the whole point of the WiX toolset. There is MSBuild >> support with the WiX v3 install and we have NAnt tasks if you use nant. >> >> After that everything is just command-line tools so you can script them >> into just about any build process out there. >> >> MacDiarmid, James D wrote: >> > Is it possible to have Wix in an automated build process. That may not >> > be the right question to ask but I wanted to throw something out there. >> > I'm looking for information on how to incorporate the Wix Toolset into >> > our build process. We have a CM person that does all of our builds >> > however she knows nothing about Wix or how to code. I'd like to be able >> > to set this up for her so that once we have a solid installation build >> > using wix, all she needs to do is press a button or execute a command or >> > batch file,etc. Would anyone have a starting point I can look at? >> > >> > Thanks in advance, >> > >> > Jim >> > >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> > The NEW KODAK i700 Series Scanners deliver under ANY circumstances! Your >> > production scanning environment may not be a perfect world - but thanks >> to >> > Kodak, there's a perfect scanner to get the job done! 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With the NEW KODAK i700 > Series Scanner you'll get full speed at 300 dpi even with all image > processing features enabled. http://p.sf.net/sfu/kodak-com > _______________________________________________ > WiX-users mailing list > WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The NEW KODAK i700 Series Scanners deliver under ANY circumstances! Your production scanning environment may not be a perfect world - but thanks to Kodak, there's a perfect scanner to get the job done! With the NEW KODAK i700 Series Scanner you'll get full speed at 300 dpi even with all image processing features enabled. http://p.sf.net/sfu/kodak-com _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
