Structuring the first installer

Here, we will build a simple installer which will install a very simple application which consists of an executable, a DLL Library and a user manual. These files will be copied to a specific directory and 2 shortcuts would appear, one in usual place in the Start Menu and other icon shortcut on the Desktop.

Let’s start by following these steps:
a. Writing a simple .wxs xml installer source code .
b. Compiling the source code
c. Building the MSI.

Wix Introduction and Features

WiX (Windows Installer XML) is a toolset that builds Windows Installation Packages from XML Source Code. It provides a command-line environment that developers may integrate into their build processes to build MSI (Microsoft Installer) packages. WiX is an open source project. This toolset is written in C#.

Pre-Requisites
.NET Framework (Required on Developer’s system).
WiX Binaries and SDK(Required on Developer’s system).

Note: The installation packages built with this toolset do not require any software to be installed on the target computer.

Features
Features and advantages of the toolset:
· Declarative approach
· Unrestricted access to Windows Installer functionality
· Source code instead of GUI-based assembly of information
· Complete integration into application build processes
· Possible integration with application development
· Support for team development, both in-house and third-party
· Free, open source

WiX (Windows Installer XML)

WiX is a cool way to generate custom installation packages (MSI).

http://wix.sourceforge.net/