Using wixlibs from another solution with TFS builds

Question

We have installers referencing a wixlib file to get some common functionality. The wixlib is built in another solution then moved to a folder within that solution. When we try to build the installers with a TFS build, we get an error from light.exe:

light.exe: The system cannot find the file '..\..\..\Core\Common\assemblies\v1.0\Common.Wix.wixlib' with type 'Source'.

Our regular projects can reference \assembiles\v1.0, since we have some other common assemblies stored there. How do we get WiX to recognize this location during build?

Answer 1

Since the shared component and the active solution are in two separate projects in TFS, the workspace must be setup so that the relative paths for references remain intact. The easiest way to do this is to set your Build Agent Folder structure in Workspace in your TFS Build to have $(SourceDir) represent your root. However, don't change your Source Control Folder - that stays the same.

For example, say you have the following structure:

-TFS
|-SharedComponents
||-MyComponents
|-ProjectArea
||-MyProject

You would want to have the following two items in the build Workspace:

Source Control Folder               Build Agent Folder
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
$/ProjectArea/MyProject             $(SourceDir)\ProjectArea\MyProject
$/SharedComponents/MyComponents     $(SourceDir)\SharedComponents\MyComponents

This mimics the structure in TFS in your build folder, thus allowing all relative paths to remain intact.

One more note about this configuration: Since you have the shared components in another location, you may want to create a solution folder in MyProject and add the components that you are using to it. This will ensure they get pulled automatically when anyone loads your project from TFS - they won't have to go back and pull down the share components folder separately after discovering a build error.

Answer 2

You are referencing wixlib directly. So as far as I understand the TFS build process, it should be added to TFS project of your solution. TFS project shouldn't be dependent on the output of another non-dependent solution. It is at least bad practice. And in any case you can't guarantee this output would be generated before your project build on server.

As far as I remember, TFS build creates separate folder for each build and gets sources there. So your solutions are no longer on the same folder hierarchy level.

One more point in favor of explicitly copying wixlibs into your installer project: versioning - in this case any bugs made in the common library will not immediately break all projects that reference it. And you can gradually upgrade and test every project. Can you imagine auomatically downloading new version of any 3rd party dll on every build? Any change in that dll will immediately break your application even if changes are not critical to you.