Cannot add reference to wix project Visual 2012

Question

In every tutorial and HowTo site (like here) about WiX I read I should add reference to my other project, but when I select Add Reference I have nothing on Project list in Project tab. I try this on Visual Studio 2012, earlier with WiX 3.7 and now on 3.8.

If there is solution simply not using "Add Reference" function how can I build this other way? I'm a beginner so I don't really know how to use WiX without this feature, if I published my C# application in Publish Wizard I should add all produced files to Component Group with every file in <Component> tag?

Answer 1

It could be this simple...

In Visual Studio, Add Reference's Project tab only lists projects in the same solution. You just need to Add Project to the solution and go back to the Add Reference's dialog.

A solution is just a set of zero or more projects that can be built together. You can have a project in more than one solution. The only limitation is that if project B references project A (B is downstream of A), A should be in every solution that contains B. If the universe of projects is small, it is typical to have only one solution for them all. On the other hand, if one developer works only on upstream projects, that developer might find it easier to work with a solution that doesn't have downstream projects.

Setup projects tend to be downstream but note that they probably don't depend on library test projects.

[Stream is not the best technical term. The universe of connected projects is a directed acyclic graph.]