WiX Cookbook

Building a WiX installer from the command line

WiX has excellent integration with Visual Studio, but that shouldn't stop you from using it in other IDEs. We ought to be able to create an installer using only Notepad and the WiX compiler and linker if we wanted to. Luckily, WiX gives us the freedom to do this. In this recipe, we'll write a simple .wxs file and compile it into an MSI package using Candle, which is the WiX compiler, and Light, which is the WiX linker.

Getting ready

To prepare for this recipe, perform the following steps:

1. Using a text editor such as Notepad, create a file called Product.wxs and add the following markup to it:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <Wix xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/wi"> <Product Id="*" ...