WiX project allowing side-by-side installation

Question

I am in the process of creating an MSI for our product. I would like the product to be able to install side-by-side. So that I can install 1.0.0 first and later can add 1.0.1 so that the two versions are both installed.

I am using WiX to create the msi and would like to know how this can and should be done in Wix? For example

• Do I need to create new Guids for all components?
• How would i add the version info to wix or should i rename my product completely?
• How can I create the projects so that releasing a new version requires minimal changes in the wix project?

Greetings, Martijn

Answer 1

You should be able to get away with just changing the top-level productcode and UpgradeCode GUIDs to make your two products completely unrelated, and use the Productversion to identify the version. You can share component guids between products (that's how merge modules work) so that the guts of your installer (component definitions) needn't be tweaked and can still be shared.

You major challenge will be ensuring that the two decoupled products don't interfere with one another, for example by having the same default installation folder, start menu entries and the same Add/Remove programs entry. You might achieve this by including the product version number in the ProductName Property, which can look a bit techy in your install UI, but it isn't unheard of.