12.10 Creating a Setup Project with WiX
Creating an installer is a crucial part of the packaging and deployment process. Visual Studio ships with several project templates for setup and deployment, the most notable of which is the Setup Project template. This works well enough for some folks, but for those who prefer a more structured setup system, or who prefer their setup projects to be separate from their source-code solutions, enter WiX.
WiX, or Windows Installer XML, is an authoring toolset for turning XML files (based upon a schema, wix.xsd) into Windows Installer packages (MSI, MSM, or MSP files). WiX began as a side project in 1999 (originally created in VBScript) that soon was picked up by a few teams inside Microsoft. It has the distinction of being the first project from Microsoft to be released under the Common Public License. It was first made available in April 2004 on SourceForge (where it still resides as of the time of this writing). Rob Mensching (who is often referred to as the “Father of WiX”) is the creator of WiX and the project lead. He is also the individual who worked to release the toolset externally.
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Tool | WiX |
Version covered | 2.0.4103.0 (stable), 3.0.1703.0 (unstable) |
Home page | |
Power Tools page | |
Summary | Toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code |
License type ... | |
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