Hi Greg, If I understand your problem correctly, what you need to do is add these dll's as references to the custom action project, then set the Copy Local property to true. When you build the custom action, your customaction.CA.dll will contain all of the dependencies needed for it to run, including your old dll's.
If you really want to copy the dll's to the machine, you will need to add them to a component with a <file .../> tag, reference it in a feature, and schedule your custom action to run after the files are copied. -----Original Message----- From: GregS [mailto:gsh...@actuate.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2013 4:37 PM To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [WiX-users] Including "third party" DLLs for installer to use I'm new to WiX so my apologies if this is something I should know already. Background: I'm trying to use WiX to implement a new installer for an existing product whose current installer was written using a commercial tool. We have a large library of functions that our current installer calls during installation to do various tasks (for example, to validate the user's license file). This DLL is old and is not written in a .Net language. Rewriting the DLL is not an option - I'm under a tight schedule and it is too large to consider rewriting. So I need to reuse it. Since I can't call the DLL directly from WiX, what I did is to import it manually into my C# custom action DLL. I'm writing wrapper functions in the custom action DLL to call the functions in the old DLL. So far this works, but only because the old DLL is already present on the target computer and is in a known location. What I need is for this DLL to be bundled inside the MSI so that it gets unpacked into the temporary installation folder. I haven't been able to find a way to do this, and from Googling for an answer I've read that it isn't safe or recommended (for example here: http://windows-installer-xml-wix-toolset.687559.n2.nabble.com/Call-3rd-party-dll-from-C-Custom-Action-td699134.html). I tried using the <Binary> tag to include it but no luck. Probably because the DLL is not actually used from the WiX installer itself, but only imported at run time into the custom action DLL. I also have to do something similar with an external EXE that our old installer calls. Any suggestions? Is what I'm trying to do possible? Thanks GregS -- View this message in context: http://windows-installer-xml-wix-toolset.687559.n2.nabble.com/Including-third-party-DLLs-for-installer-to-use-tp7585415.html Sent from the wix-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Try New Relic Now & We'll Send You this Cool Shirt New Relic is the only SaaS-based application performance monitoring service that delivers powerful full stack analytics. Optimize and monitor your browser, app, & servers with just a few lines of code. Try New Relic and get this awesome Nerd Life shirt! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic_d2d_apr _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Try New Relic Now & We'll Send You this Cool Shirt New Relic is the only SaaS-based application performance monitoring service that delivers powerful full stack analytics. Optimize and monitor your browser, app, & servers with just a few lines of code. Try New Relic and get this awesome Nerd Life shirt! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic_d2d_apr _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
