Good resources for learning how to create MSI installers from WiX [closed]

Answer 1

Chiming in with another shameless plug; I recently wrote an article where I somewhat desperately try to explain some of the concepts of WiX in a more easily-understood way than the others. No offence.

http://www.optimalbpm.se/wiki/index.php/WiX

It is meant to be read before reading any tutorials, because it specifically tries to address some of the things people always seem to misunderstand as a result of well, reading those tutorials. And especially the documentation. At least I did.

Also, there is another article, a little bit more advanced, that has an angle to those distributing script(like Python etc)-based systems, and why one in not only those, but all cases should use Paraffin rather than Heat.

http://www.optimalbpm.se/wiki/index.php/Wix_and_scripting_languages

Answer 2

I've written a tutorial that shows you how to create a WIX installer for a console application here, if you wanted a practical example.

Answer 3

• The WiX tutorial is the #1 resource
• The people on the mailing list are very helpful
• There's a The Code Project article, Creating an installer using Wix v3.0, Votive, and Visual Studio 2005/2008 - Part 2, the GUI that might help
• Ther's a bunch of blogs, I keep bumping into Rob Mensching's (old).
• Rob Mensching's new blog.
• I haven't read WiX - Windows Installer XML (broken link), but I found it in my bookmarks
• This code project tutorial outlines the bare minimum and builds up from there

Answer 4

I have to add wix-users@lists.wixtoolset.org. That's where everyone hangs out and asks/answers questions as they come up. Just lurking on that mailing list will provide lots of real-time education on the WiX toolset.

Answer 5

One of the best ways I found to learn WiX was to take an existing MSI that did something I wanted to do, and used the Dark decompiler to generate a WiX script from it, and then I read that.