How change details of an exe file using wix bootstraper?

Question

I have a Visual Studio bundle file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Wix xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/wi"
     xmlns:bal="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/BalExtension">
    <Bundle 
    Name="Some Name"
    Version="3.2.2" 
    Manufacturer="Some Company" 
    Copyright="Copyright: Some Company, Inc">
    ...
    </Bundle>
</Wix>

After build exe details menu contains two parameters (File description and Product Name) and these parameters have the same value. There is a way make these values different using only WIX functionality?

Answer 1

As of Wix Version 3.10.2, you cannot set different values for the ProductName and FileDescription fields of the exe file description resource.

Looking at the WIX source code, specifically the file src\tools\wix\Binder.cs from WIX310-Debug.zip downloadable from here, shows the following code fragment for setting the exe file's resources:

        Microsoft.Deployment.Resources.VersionStringTable strings = version[1033];
        strings["LegalCopyright"] = bundleInfo.Copyright;
        strings["OriginalFilename"] = Path.GetFileName(outputPath);
        strings["FileVersion"] = bundleInfo.Version;    // string versions do not have to be four parts.
        strings["ProductVersion"] = bundleInfo.Version; // string versions do not have to be four parts.

        if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(bundleInfo.Name))
        {
            strings["ProductName"] = bundleInfo.Name;
            strings["FileDescription"] = bundleInfo.Name;
        }

Notice that ProductName and FileDescription are set to the same value.

If this is important you could request a new feature via the WiX issue tracking database: https://github.com/wixtoolset/issues/issues.