Good resources for learning how to create MSI installers from WiX

Question

I've given up trying to apply lipstick to the pigs of installers that come out of Visual Studio and have decided to look at WiX.

What resources would you recommend to learn and reference?

(Note - this is not a which-installer-technology-do-you-use question - it's specific to WiX.)

As per http://stackoverflow.com/questions/128434/what-are-community-wiki-posts-in-stackoverflow This is more or less a poll to find the best WiX references — Ryan, Nov 21 '08 at 22:42

score 70 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 08 '15 at 07:20

70

The WiX tutorial is the #1 resource
The people on the mailing list are very helpful
There's a The Code Project article, Creating an installer using Wix v3.0, Votive, and Visual Studio 2005/2008 - Part 2, the GUI that might help
Ther's a bunch of blogs, I keep bumping into Rob Mensching's (old).
Rob Mensching's new blog.
I haven't read ~~WiX - Windows Installer XML~~ (broken link), but I found it in my bookmarks
This code project tutorial outlines the bare minimum and builds up from there

edited Sep 08 '15 at 07:20

Rob Mensching

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answered Nov 21 '08 at 22:30

Cristian Libardo

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Rob Mensching (http://stackoverflow.com/users/23852/rob-mensching) is the WiX project lead. – M. Dudley Dec 29 '09 at 20:17
Thanks for there links – Abdulsalam Elsharif Apr 12 '16 at 01:19

Chris · Answer 2 · 2013-11-12T19:25:48.147

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One of the best ways I found to learn WiX was to take an existing MSI that did something I wanted to do, and used the Dark decompiler to generate a WiX script from it, and then I read that.

edited Nov 12 '13 at 19:25

answered Dec 28 '08 at 08:17

Chris

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'Dark' link is dead mate. – IbrarMumtaz Nov 09 '13 at 20:23
Couldn't quite find a good replacement link, their docs have changed a lot. – Chris Nov 12 '13 at 19:26
I second this - using dark this way is in fact a great way to learn Wix and yields a surprising granularity and control for special installation cases such as IIS and similar advanced features. This granularity is actually lacking in other tools since they focus on simplicity. – Stein Åsmul Apr 22 '14 at 00:16

score 12 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 27 '14 at 07:55

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Apart from the links provided by people above, also have a look at the approach I use to explain this to people :

Wix Commands for creating msi from wix :

answered Feb 27 '14 at 07:55

Sid

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score 9 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 06 '12 at 12:09

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From first glance From MSI to WiX seems fairly comprehensive.

edited Nov 06 '12 at 12:09

Peter Mortensen

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answered Nov 21 '08 at 22:25

Ryan

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Rob Mensching · Answer 5 · 2015-09-08T07:21:41.257

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I have to add wix-users@lists.wixtoolset.org. That's where everyone hangs out and asks/answers questions as they come up. Just lurking on that mailing list will provide lots of real-time education on the WiX toolset.

edited Sep 08 '15 at 07:21

answered Nov 22 '08 at 02:26

Rob Mensching

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score 6 · Answer 6 · edited Nov 06 '12 at 12:11

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Even though it's not only related towards WiX, the book from Apress:

The Definitive guide to Windows Installer By Phil Wilson link

It helped me to understand the installation processes. It's a good book to have when writing installers.

edited Nov 06 '12 at 12:11

Peter Mortensen

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answered Nov 24 '08 at 15:33

CheGueVerra

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Everyone should read this *before* embarking on understanding WiX – saschabeaumont Apr 18 '10 at 23:05

score 5 · Answer 7 · answered Oct 19 '10 at 12:18

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Here's a shameless plug to the book I've recently published through Packt:

WiX: A Developer's Guide to Windows Installer XML

It covers a lot of what you'd need to know to get going using WiX 3.0.

answered Oct 19 '10 at 12:18

Nick R.

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score 2 · Answer 8 · edited Nov 06 '12 at 12:13

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If you understand German, then read the articles in the Entwickler Magazin, edition: 2008-05, 2008-06 and 2009-01.

A follow-up will be published in 2009-02, with more developing stuff (MSI API).

edited Nov 06 '12 at 12:13

Peter Mortensen

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answered Dec 15 '08 at 22:06

Bernd Ott

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score 2 · Answer 9 · answered Jul 21 '16 at 23:19

You may use link as a reference https://www.firegiant.com/wix/tutorial/ It won't help a beginner as it didn't provide any practical examples.

For a beginner, if you have a pluralsight subscription, there is a course which will teach you the basics.

'WIX-Cookbook' https://www.packtpub.com/web-development/wix-cookbook by Nick-Ramirez (Covers Wix-3.8). This is the book if anyone looking to get the job done quickly.

If you want to gain in-depth knowledge on how and why everything works, you probably better of going through Wix-3.6 A Developers Guide by the same author. https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/wix-developers-guide-windows-installer-xml

To create an installer for websites, refer following series by Bart De Meyer http://blog.bartdemeyer.be/2013/10/create-an-installer-for-website-with-wix-part-1/ This article will show you how to use Wix tools like Candle and Light.

biological · Answer 10 · 2018-10-08T21:45:18.623

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I've written a tutorial that shows you how to create a WIX installer for a console application here, if you wanted a practical example.

edited Oct 08 '18 at 21:45

answered Apr 28 '14 at 16:30

biological

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Link is broken. – Steve Smith Apr 10 '18 at 09:28
Fixed the link. – biological Oct 08 '18 at 21:46

Nicklas Börjesson · Answer 11 · 2014-11-05T13:59:51.603

Chiming in with another shameless plug; I recently wrote an article where I somewhat desperately try to explain some of the concepts of WiX in a more easily-understood way than the others. No offence.

http://www.optimalbpm.se/wiki/index.php/WiX

It is meant to be read before reading any tutorials, because it specifically tries to address some of the things people always seem to misunderstand as a result of well, reading those tutorials. And especially the documentation. At least I did.

Also, there is another article, a little bit more advanced, that has an angle to those distributing script(like Python etc)-based systems, and why one in not only those, but all cases should use Paraffin rather than Heat.

http://www.optimalbpm.se/wiki/index.php/Wix_and_scripting_languages

Good resources for learning how to create MSI installers from WiX

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