How to create a companion file using WiX's Heat tool

Question

Our build process pulls in .dll's and creates 'policy.*.dll' files and the companion 'policy.*.config' files from them. While looking through WiX's 'dark' output of our MSI, I discovered that the policy and corresponding config files were within the same Component linked by the CompanionFile tag.

Is there a way to have Heat harvest the 'policy.*.dll' Files and companion 'policy.*.config' Files within the same Component tag at the same time?

Answer 1

You would need to write an XSLT to transform the output to combine the two files in one Component and mark the CompanionFile attribute on one of the File elements. XSLT is basically the ultimate general purpose transformation for all heat output (even if XSL is kinda' complex).