Quick Way To Create a MSI For You Web Projects Using Wix

I’ve know about Wix (Windows Install Xml) tool set for quite some time but haven’t had much to do with it.  Wix is a great tool for working within the Windows environment.  It is a XML based way of defining how you want you MSI packaged.  It comes with Visual Studio template projects, and few very useful tools.

Background of my problem to solve: My company has been using Web Site projects and Visual Studio Deployment/Setup projects for a very long time.  I know, all these project types are the bane of Visual Studio’s ease of use when it comes to projects.  Our requirement is to create MSI installers of our web services.

I’ll be assuming you are using a web application project type, web site projects are deprecated after Visual Studio 2010. Below are some simple steps you can take to create a MSI out of your web application projects.

NOTE: One thing about Wix that helps a lot, is consistent naming convention for items that are not auto-generated, for example, IIS virtual directory component IDs ending in “.VDir” or folder IDs ending in “Folder”.

1.  Install the latest Wix Toolset, http://wixtoolset.org/.  To save yourself time, add the the Wix bin (something like C:\Program Files (x86)\WiX Toolset v3.8\bin) folder to your PATH environment variable so the tools can be accessed on the command line.

2.  Go to you web application.  Right click and select Publish.  You will be just publishing to a local folder so if you have other publishing profiles create a new one, call it LocalFolder or something like that.  The publishing properties should look like the following.

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3.  Create a Wix project in the same solution of the web application project.

4.  Add the web application project as a reference in the Wix project as shown below.  Yes, Wix has build dependencies, it’s pretty cool!

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4.  Now we will create a component wix file, a file defining all of our project outputs we want in our MSI (i.e. dlls, asmx, etc.).  Below is the following line I’ve used to quickly generate a wix file, which usually doesn’t need much tweaking after it’s done.

heat dir "C:\Temp\HtngWebServices" -out "{PathToWhereYouWantYourWixFix}\Components.wxs" -gg -g1 -sreg -sfrag -var var.{ProjectName}.ProjectDir -dr WebServicesFolder -cg HtngWebServicesComponents

dir = directory which you will pull files from to generate wxs file

out = the location you want to create the wxs file in, generally this will be your Wix project or a Wix setup library project.

var = variable to place in front of the file location of the file being referenced in wix, this will be apparent when I describe the how the Wix project references work below.

dr = Directory reference to root directories, see Wix documentation.

gg, g1, sreg, sfrag = see Wix documentation.

5.  Once the Components.wxs is generated (Compnonents.wxs is just a name I choose for simplicity of example), add it to the Wix project. 

Opening the Components.wxs that was generated by “heat”, you’ll notice a line like “Source="$(var.HtngWebServices.ProjectDir)\Web.config".  The part I’ve italicized is a variable, see Using Project References and Variables, is a project ref so when our dependent project builds all the files we need will be located by Wix, this is handy but may not fit everyone’s situation.

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6.  In the Wix project, add the following Wix library references, which are found in C:\Program Files (x86)\WiX Toolset v3.8\bin\.

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At the top of your Product.wxs file you will need to add the following XML namespaces.

     xmlns:iis="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/IIsExtension"      xmlns:util="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/UtilExtension"

7.  Add a wix file (.wxs) to your Wix project called IISConfiguration.wxs.  This is where the IIS settings will go.

8.  In the IISConfiguration file you will need to add DirectoryRef for virtual directories that you need.  See the IIS documentation for detail, below is what It looks like

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9.  You will need to add feature(s) to the Product.wxs file that was generated with the project.  Here we’ve used 2 features, see Feature documentation.  Each of the ComponentRef under the IIS virtual directories section shown below will be linked to the next step, and the item circled in read represents the ComponentRef of our web application project components and virtual director.

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10.  A few more fragments will need to be added to you Product.wxs file to complete the installation information that the MSI will need.  Below is a shot of these sections.

First Fragment – this is for IIS extension to know what web site your are targeting, see IIS extensions.

Second Fragment – the first directory structure is the “TARGETDIR” directory which are constants from MSI framework, see MSDN, the rest is nesting for our installation location.  The other DirectoryRef towards the bottom is for permissions for IIS process to access the installed folders.

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To be honest the learning curve is a little steep for Wix at first but once you wrestle it down, you begin to be able to follow what is going on.  The best guide is their documentation http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/ and Google other examples of specific tasks you are trying to achieve.  This thread is a accumulation of such time spent Googling various specifics of “how-to”’.

Errors In TFS Build Definition With Different Version of Visual Studio Installed

As Visual Studio 2012 and 2013 came out, I installed them to try them out and get to know the enhancements and changes.  At work, we use Visual 2010 and TFS 2010.  Using the team build workflow is OK, it has it merits with visual layout and .NET code access when using activities like if statements.  The one downside that I ran across after install VS2013 was nearly the whole workflow build definition had errors now!

It turns out that there are assembly reference issues between having VS2010 and VS2013 side by side.  Being a little dismayed, and not to mention ugly to look at, I ventured into what to do to fix it.

1.  First, you have to manage your build definition in a project just like you would code.  Below is an example.  The project can be a simple class library with not code files, just build definitions.  I do this whenever I setup TFS.

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2.  You need to add a reference to all the libraries being reference in the xaml code.  If you open your xaml by selecting View Code you can see all the references.  To add reference right click project references and navigate to the location of the correct TFS libraries, most of them are in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\ReferenceAssemblies\v2.0\, I just search for dll under C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0.

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What is a .winmd and how to use it in a desktop application

A .winmd is a file used by Windows 8 WinRT (Windows Run Time).  winmd stands for Windows Meta Data file which is the same format used by the .NET framework for the CLI (common language interface).  As such it can be viewed by .NET tools such as Reflector and the ildasm tool packaged with .NET.  You can find these files in various places but one command place is c:\Windows\System32\WinMetadata.

These files are focused on Windows store apps but it doesn’t preclude you from using them in a traditional desktop app.  To do so you need to do the following to your desktop application in order to leverage functionality in these APIs.

1.  Unload your application.  Edit the project file and add the tag near target version, “<TargetPlatformVersion>8.0</TargetPlatformVersion>”.

2.  Reload your project.  You will need to add a reference to the following DLLs.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.5\WindowsBase.dll

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\System.Runtime.dll

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.dll

3.  Now you will be able to leverage functionality provided by the WinRT framework, such as camera, NFC, etc.