Getting Started With WIX (Windows Installer XML) in VS2012

It will explain all the properties in detail and you can get a practical example from here.

Note: You must provide the new GUID where I have "Your-Guid-". You can do that very easily from Visual Studio.

Click on "Tools" and click on "Create GUID"; it creates a new GUID every time.


Use the new GUID by just clicking on the "Copy" button and paste it wherever you want the GUID.



Add WPF project to the *.WXS File

We need to give a reference of the WPF Application project in the *.WXS file. So that we can use the variables of the WIX you can see this on the link and in: http://wix.sourceforge.net/manual-wix3/votive_project_references.htm. I have done that like this:



Add Cab1.cab File inside the Package

When you build you WIX project it will create a Cab1.cab file and a *.setup so if we need only one single file for the setup add that time we need to add that file to our setup file.

Create Folder in Program Files Folders


Create Folder in Program Menu for Program menu shortcut

In the start menu we can create a folder and inside the folder we can provide our application. To do that we need to do 3 steps.



Step 1: Create Program Menu Folder

It will create a folder named "My System Pvt Ltd " in the Start Menu.

Step 2: Add shortcut of our application with image


You can use any *.ico file ,add that file to the WIX project.

Step 3: Add shortcut component to Features


We are telling you that you need to add this shortcut to the installer.

Create shortcut on Desktop

If you need to add a shortcut to the Desktop then we need to use the same steps as we did for creating the shortcut in the Startup Menu or Program Menu.

Step 1: Create Desktop Folder


Step 2: Add shortcut of our application with image



Step 3: Add shortcut component to Features


Add the Application to the Startup Folder (When the user is logged into the application it starts automatically)

If you want to put your application in the Startup folder then you can do that as you have done for the Program Menu shortcut and Desktop shortcut.

Step 1: Create Startup Folder


Step 2: Add shortcut of our application with an image



Step 3: Add shortcut component to Features


Conclusion

We can create the setup of application using the Windows Installer XML very easily. We can get all the functionality of the Windows installation using WIX.

If this article helps you then please tell me by you valuable comments.