WiX Relative Path to the Source File

Question

I have a simple Solution for my Project, which works well. But I am unable to grasp how to make the Source paths relative. Can somebody help me?

  <Component Id="Bla.exe" Guid="*">     <File Id="Bla.exe" Source="D:\Projects\Bla\Bla\bin\Debug\Bla.exe" KeyPath="yes" Checksum="yes"/>   </Component> 

How can I make the Path relative to the Wix Solution? WiX and all necessary files are in the same Solution.

Answer 1

You can use the relative path like so:

    <File Id="Bla.exe" Source="..\bin\Debug\Bla.exe" KeyPath="yes" Checksum="yes"/> 

OR

You can add a configuration file to your project to define common variables. To do so, add a new "WiX Include" file to your project, call it config.wxi. Then in your include file, you can define a SourceDir variable like so:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Include>   <?define SourceDir = "D:\Projects\Bla\Bla\bin\Debug" ?> </Include> 

Now in your .wxs file, you can add a reference to the config file at the top, ex:

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

Then just reference your SourceDir variable like so:

<File Id="Bla.exe" Source="$(var.SourceDir)\Bla.exe" KeyPath="yes" Checksum="yes"/> 

Also, there are some built in WiX project variables that you may use.

Answer 2

There are many ways to do this but personally what I like to do is put my application installer projects in different solutions. I build the application solution first and use postbuild commands to publish the content to a deploy folder.

In my installer projects I set $(var.SourceDir)="..\deploy" and then $(var.SourceDir)\foo.exe for a source path.