Windows Installer XML (WiX)

Raycomm are a UK based, custom software and electronics design and development service company creating bespoke electronic products, mobile device software applications, backend web server software and e-commerce database software.

The Windows Installer XML (WiX) is a toolset that builds installation packages from XML source code. It supports a command line environment so can readily be integrated in to build processes to build MSI and MSM setup packages. WiX currently has a stable 2.0 release and a version 3.0 is in development which modifies and adds new features to the core toolset.

There is also a Visual Studio Package for WiX (Votive) that lets you create and build WiX setup projects using the Visual Studio IDE. Votive supports syntax highlighting and intellisense for .wxs source files and adds WiX setup project type to Visual Studio.

This software is released by Microsoft under an open-source license called Common Public License. Rob Mensching is the original author and lead developer of WiX, he works on WiX in his spare time and is a Microsoft Employee. Microsoft use WiX internally to build a lot of their more complex installs such as Microsoft Office. It is also used by a number of the well known open source programs such as MySQL to generate their Windows installs

The WiX toolset is composed of several components. The names derive from a play on words on the wick(s) (WiX) of a candle.

Candle

Candle is the compiler used to compile the XML documents to object files that contain symbols and references to symbols.

Light

Light the linker takes one or more object files and links the references in the object files to the appropriate symbols in other object files. It also collects all the binaries, packaging them appropriately and generating the final MSI or MSM file.

Dark

Dark is a decompiler which takes an existing MSI and MSM file and generates XML documents that represents the package. This allows you to convert an installer created using different install software such as Install Shield or Visual Studios default install builder and create a WiX project.

Tallow/Heat

Tallow is a tool for generating WiX filelist code by traversing a directory tree of files. It produces a WiX fragment which can be incorporated with other WiX files at compile time. This is useful for automating the build of an installer that has a complex file structure of changing files. In WiX 3.0 a more general tool has been created called Heat. There is also an alternative to Tallow called Mallow that adds synchronisation and improved component ID generation.

Extension Guides

In addition to allowing the user to generate a fully controlled installer WiX offers a number of extension guides that help with different aspects of install creation by providing custom actions and dialogs. The ones currently available are:

• UiExtension for standard dialogs
• NetFxExtension Handles the detecting and installing of versions of .NET
• SqlExtension Handles creating SQL Server databases and running SQL scripts
• IIsExtension Handles configuring Internet Information Services
• DifxExtension for driver installation
• UtilExtension several unrelated custom actions like EventSource, perfCounter, permissions etc.
• VsExtension for installing help collections into Visual Studios Help System
• OfficeExtension for installing MS Office Add-ins
• IsolatedAppExtension part of ClickThrough

Raycomm has experience of building installers for a range of applications. They have been using WiX since it original release in 2004 when they found the limitations of the Visual Studio Installer prevented the completion of their complex installer impossible. Since then they have developed a number of installers using the WiX environment.

Building applications that will install successfully across a range of Windows versions is not simple, requiring testing against each installation and often requiring different installation rules for each environment. Raycomm make extensive use of Virtual PC to create sample test environments for each operating system that the installer is targeted for so that the installs are fully tested.

All applications supplied by Raycomm (including drivers) can be supplied with custom installers tailored to the customer’s exact need.