Installing an MSBuild extension

installationmsbuildwix

I have created a task for MSBuild that is to be used by developers and would like to create an installer to install the task and the associated .targets file into the MSBuild extensions folder in Program Files (usually C:/Program Files/MSBuild on 32-bit XP).

To do this properly, I would like to ask the system for that folder location at installation time – is there a registry key that provides this information or some other installer property? I intend to use WiX for the installation.

Best Answer

Wix itself has a MSBuild task so I think its best to see how they did it, the relvent source is Toolset.wxs (Google Code Search).

Look at the part where they defined the MSBuild Folder:

<DirectoryRef Id="ProgramFilesFolder">
    <Directory Id="Dir_MSBuild" Name="MSBuild">
        <Directory Id="Dir_MSBuildMS" Name="Microsoft">
            <Directory Id="Dir_MSBuildMSWix" Name="WiX">
                <Directory Id="Dir_MSBuildMSWix35" Name="v3.5">
                    <Component Id="WixMSBuildBinaries35" 
                              Guid="2CB1EA5F-2542-4AFF-A05B-FAF576265F89" 
                              Win64="no">
                        <File Source="WixTasks.dll" Checksum="yes" 
                              KeyPath="yes" Vital="yes" />
                    </Component>
                </Directory>
            </Directory>
        </Directory>
    </Directory>
</DirectoryRef>

This will install the Wix MsBuild task (WixTasks.dll) under \Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\Wix

Related Solutions

Copy all files and folders using msbuild

I was searching help on this too. It took me a while, but here is what I did that worked really well.

<Target Name="AfterBuild">
    <ItemGroup>
        <ANTLR Include="..\Data\antlrcs\**\*.*" />
    </ItemGroup>
    <Copy SourceFiles="@(ANTLR)" DestinationFolder="$(TargetDir)\%(RecursiveDir)" SkipUnchangedFiles="true" />
</Target>

This recursively copied the contents of the folder named antlrcs to the $(TargetDir).

How to add a WiX custom action that happens only on uninstall (via MSI)

EDIT: Perhaps look at the answer currently immediately below.

This topic has been a headache for long time. I finally figured it out. There are some solutions online, but none of them really works. And of course there is no documentation. So in the chart below there are several properties that are suggested to use and the values they have for various installation scenarios:

alt text

So in my case I wanted a CA that will run only on uninstalls - not upgrades, not repairs or modifies. According to the table above I had to use

<Custom Action='CA_ID' Before='other_CA_ID'>
        (NOT UPGRADINGPRODUCTCODE) AND (REMOVE="ALL")</Custom>

And it worked!

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Copy all files and folders using msbuild

How to add a WiX custom action that happens only on uninstall (via MSI)

Related Topic