Wixgem

Ruby gem to facilitate automate constructing Windows installation files with the Wix Toolset.

Wixgem can be installed by the single command: gem install wixgem

The WiX Toolset must be installed.

require 'wixgem'
	
Wixgen::Wix.make_installation('Product.msi', ['rakefile.rb']])

Wixgen::Wix.make_installation('Product.msi', {product_name: 'productname',
                              version: '1.1.0.0'
                              upgrade_code: '{1d5df00a-c18d-4897-95e6-8c936dd19647}',
                              files: ['rakefile.rb'] }	
					   
Wixgen::Wix.make_installation('Product.msi', {modify_file_paths: {/\Atest_files\// => ''}, 
                              files: Dir.glob("test_files/**/*")})					   

require 'wixgem'
	
WIX_TOOLSET_ROOT='path to root of Wix toolset'
Wixgen::Wix.make_mergemodule('Product.msm', ['rakefile.rb']])

An example rakefile.rb is included in the example directory of the gem.

Wixgem will generate an installation or merge module from an array of files. The Wixgem also supports a small set of optional arguments allowing the developer to customize the generated installation file.

• product_name: String specifing the product name of the installation.
• manufacturer: String specifing the manufacturer of the installation.
• version: String specifing the version of the installation. i.e. '1.1.0.0'
• product_code: Is a string GUID used to uniquely identify each version of the installation. i.e.' {4528ae5a-c7fa-40a6-a70e-ac8135f1114c}'
• upgrade_code: Is a string GUID used to identify all installed versions of the product. It is important to properly address the upgrade code before shipping the first version of a product.
• files: A string array of file paths to be added to the installation.
• modify_file_paths: A hash of regex objects to replacement string pairs. The regular expressions are applied to the file paths allowing the developer to modify the relative location of the files in the installation.
• has_vb6_files: Required if installation contains any ocx's or dll's compiled with Visual Basic 6.
• remove_existing_products: A boolean value. If the value is true the installation will remove the previous installation of the product before installing the product.
• all_users: String value perUser or perMachine. The default is perUser.
• suppress_registry_harvesting Suppress's heat's registry harvesting. Can fix the Runtime Error E6034.
• suppress_COM_elements Suppress COM elements, Heat's -scom
• installer_version Represents the minimum version of the Windows installer required to install this package. The default version is 4.5 i.e. NETFRAMEWORK45
• requires_netframework Tests to see if the require netframework version is installed on the machine. The associated value specifies the netframework version. The net framework strings can be found at http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/manual/v3/customactions/wixnetfxextension.html
• binary_table Key is associated with an array of hashes specifying a file and a binary key to place into the binary table.
• custom_actions Key is associated with an array of hashes specifying the arguments for custom actions.
• ** shortcuts ** Key is associated with a hash specifying arguments to create shortcuts. Currently, the only supported shortcut is a desktop shortcut.
• ** extensions ** Key is associated with a hash to register executables with extensions.
• ** com_self_register ** Is a key associated with an array of files com dll's/exe's to mark for self registration
• ** ignore_files ** Is a key associated with an array of files to ignore when generating the installation. This key is useful for having files copied to the installation folder to generating the installation, but not adding the files to the installation. An example of usage is I had a COM dll causing heat some problems, so I needed to add the dependency dll's to the install directory so heat could harvest the com registry entries, but heat was choking on adding the support dll to the installation. Thus, I was able to create a merge module for the COM dll and another merge module for the supporting dlls.
• debug: Boolean value. If debug is true the Product's wxs file and a log file are copied to the same directory as the output msi file. If you are familiar with WiX this can helpful if there is a problem.

Copyright 2013-2014 Kevin Marshall

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.