How to pass additional WXS files to candle when using votive?

Question

When building a WIXLIB from Visual Studio using Votive, how do you specify to candle where to find additional WXS files that are not part of the Visual Studio project (and are also not part of a referenced project)?

I do not want to add the WXS files to the project because they are updated by heat.exe during the build process, and therefore need to remain editable (i.e., they cannot be added to source control with the rest of the project).

Answer 1

I would suggest that you just create a separate wixlib for your heat-generated files and then link that wixlib into your final installer, rather than trying to hack the project file to add your generated files. In fact it should be pretty easy to use the Wix MsBuild tasks to perform your heat task, and then take the output of the heat task and pass that directly into the CandleTask.