WiX Cookbook

Referencing the output of a .NET console application in a WiX project by using a preprocessor variable

After setting up our WiX project, the first thing we'll probably want to do is package up the files that we plan to install. Since we're working in Visual Studio, we'll likely want to include the output of other projects such as the .exe file that's created from a console application project. At first, we could try hardcoding the path to the file:

<Component Id="cmpMyConsoleAppEXE" 
  Guid="{882DB6AA-1363-4724-8C43-2950E7ABECD4}">
  <File Source="..\MyConsoleApp\bin\Debug\MyConsoleApp.exe" />
</Component>

Although this works, it's a bit brittle and will break if the path to the file changes. Instead, we can use a preprocessor variable to store the ...