Creating localized WIX 3.6 bootstrappers.

Question

I created a WIX project in Visual Studio 2010 over a year ago. It creates an MSI file and a bootstrapper setup.exe. Actually, it creates that pair of files for two languag

Answer 1

There are several things going on here:

1. If you use multiple Cultures, you can't use TargetPath in something outside MSBuild that expects a single filename. As you found, TargetPath is a list of the localized files that were built. However, you can use TargetPath if you qualify the .msi package's output language: <MsiPackage SourceFile="$(var.TestMsi.en-US.TargetPath)" Id="MsiEnUs" />

2. If you want to create one bootstrapper that can install either/both en-US and fr-FR, you'll need to list each .msi package separately in its own MsiPackage element.

3. If you want to create two bootstrappers, one en-US and one fr-FR, you'll need to invoke the bootstrapper .wixproj twice, once for each language. Bootstrappers don't support the Cultures "trick" -- it's problematic to produce two outputs from a single invocation of MSBuild (witness the TargetPath problem).

If you're using WixStandardBootstrapperApplication, it automatically tries to localize the UI based on the user UI language, falling back to the system UI language, and finally falling back to English. It looks for localized strings in directories named after the LCID, so you'd have payloads like this:

<Payload Name="1033\thm.wxl" SourceFile="..." />
<Payload Name="1036\thm.wxl" SourceFile="..." />

Unfortunately, WixStandardBootstrapperApplication strings are currently available only for en-US. That's why an fr-FR bootstrapper shows UI in English. You'd need to localize the WiX source file HyperlinkTheme.wxl or RtfTheme.wxl (depending on which theme you use). Both of these files are in src\ext\BalExtension\wixstdba\Resources.

Answer 2

good. it works as Bob Arnson said.

but you must pay attention to the name and the SourceFile of payload.

<BootstrapperApplicationRef Id="WixStandardBootstrapperApplication.RtfLicense">
      <Payload Name="2052\thm.wxl" SourceFile="2052\thm.wxl" />
</BootstrapperApplicationRef>

if you change the name to another one. the bootstrapper will not be localized.