WiX安装程序将dll包含到msi中

Question

I'm trying to create an installer using WiX. To includes DLLs into .msi package I tryied two different ways. One of these is:

<DirectoryRef Id="SETTINGSDIR">
  <Component Id="CMP_CopySettings" Guid="AC7D1AA1-798B-48F5-AF8D-188B1050D47C" KeyPath="yes">
    <CreateFolder />
    <File Id="DBA.bat" Source="$(var.SolutionDir)\scr\A\A.WindowsService\bin\$(var.Configuration)\Settings\A_DB clear.bat" Checksum="yes"/>
    <File Id="AConfiguration.xml" Source="$(var.SolutionDir)\scr\A\A.WindowsService\bin\$(var.Configuration)\Settings\AConfiguration.xml" Checksum="yes"/>
    <File Id="ADB.CE.DEFAULT.sdf" Source="$(var.SolutionDir)\scr\A\A.WindowsService\bin\$(var.Configuration)\Settings\ADB.CE.DEFAULT.sdf" Checksum="yes"/>
    <File Id="ADB.CE.sdf" Source="$(var.SolutionDir)\scr\A\A.WindowsService\bin\$(var.Configuration)\Settings\A.CE.sdf" Checksum="yes"/>
    <RemoveFile Id="RemoveFileSettings" Name="*" On="uninstall"/>
  </Component>
</DirectoryRef>

But as you can easily understand, it's very hard write an xml node for each DLL (6 projects with 200+ DLLs for each one).

The second one is faster, but WiX just creates a link to the folder instead of copy DLLs into msi package

<DirectoryRef Id="SETTINGSDIR">
  <Component Id="CMP_CopySettings" Guid="AC7D1AA1-798B-48F5-AF8D-188B1050D47C" KeyPath="yes">
    <CreateFolder />
    <CopyFile Id="SettingsID" SourceProperty="SETTINGSSOURCEDIRECTORY" DestinationDirectory="SETTINGSDIR" SourceName="*" />
    <RemoveFile Id="RemoveFileSettings" Name="*" On="uninstall"/>
  </Component>
</DirectoryRef>

Is there a quick solution that can I add at my second way or I have to use heat.exe tool? In this case, can you explain me how to use it? The official documentation is very poor

Thanks

Answer 1

What you want is an harvest tool to do this for you. Luckily it already exists: Heat

In your specific case you might want to use the command heat dir ".\\My Files" -gg -g1 -directoryid "YourDirectoryId" -sfrag -template:fragment -out directory.wxs but check what is exactly your need, which harvesting you want to skip etc...

Note the -t <xsl> switch which gives you the total control on how you want to tune the final output.