Copy file using Burn

Question

I am using WiX Burn to make my installer, i am bundling one exe and one msi. And the exe needs an properties file at the time of install. Is there a way to copy the file using burn, i tried Payload but it is not working. Can i know the location throguh any Bundle variable where my file is copied.

Thanks Ravi S

Answer 1

Make sure you are specifying the properties file as the payload for the exe and not for the bootstrapper. For example, in your bundle, your chain may look something like this:

<Chain>
 <MsiPackage SourceFile="MyInstaller.msi" Id="MyInstaller" Cache="yes"/>
 <ExePackage SourceFile="MyExe.exe" Id="MyExe" Cache="yes">
   <Payload SourceFile="OtherFile.properties" Id="Properties"/>
 </ExePackage>
</Chain>

Also, as a sanity check, which version of WiX are you using? If you are using an older build (such as RC0), you could try updating to the latest weekly build.

Update: In WiX 3.6 it does not appear that you can get the absolute path of a payload file. There are two bugs/feature request open right now regarding the issue that are deferred to WiX 3.7:

• Add burn variable to cache path - ID: 3557446
• Change working folder to the cache folder - ID: 3538846

One workaround would be to use burn to write your own bootstrapper application and then programmatically determine the working directory and set the appropriate parameters, but that would be a lot of work for this one issue.