WiX bootstrapper silent install with custom /a argument

Question

Is it possible to initiate a silent installation of a WiX bundle through the use of a command line argument in the format of /a or /arg ?

I'm aware of the available command line arguments accepted by the wixstdba bootstrapper .

Specifically, we need to do this using the argument /s /v/qn argument.

NB: Executing the bootsrapper with the command line setup.exe /s /v/qn actually does initiate a silent install, and I assume this is because the BA interprets the /s as equivalent to -s . But since I can't find this behaviour documented anywhere, I am nervous about relying upon it, and would prefer an explicit method for doing this.

TL;DR

The reason we would like to support this argument /format is due to the automatic upgrade operation of a previous version of the software. This version of the software launched an automatically downloaded upgrade to itself, which was an InstallShield package, with the switches /s /v/qn to launch the MSI as a silent installation. Those switches are coded into a constant field, so the fact that we are moving from InstallShield to WiX presents this problem.

We would like to replicate this functionality but need a way to translate this set of arguments to either a -silent or -passive argument, or find some other method to accomplish this task.

Answer 1

Burn supports both - and / as switch characters. Silent UI mode is supported as q , quiet , s , and silent with leading - and / . See the code at https://github.com/wixtoolset/wix3/blob/develop/src/burn/engine/core.cpp#L1098 .