Wrap an EXE installer inside a WIX msi

1
votes

I found this article that shows how to call an EXE installer at the end of an installation done with a WIX installer. Unfortunately, it does not quite work for me: the EXE does not start after the installation completes. Does anyone has a working example? Unless there is something easy to change from Mr. Ryan's example? Any input would be greatly appreciated!

3
wixinstallationreportviewer
I did not finda way to make this work, but since I use Wix 3.6 I created a bundle that chains an MsiPackage (my own msi) and an ExePackage (for the Reports Viewer executable). The installation works quite well, and the installed component works just fine. It looks like crap, however. it uses the default bundle UI, with 'lorem ipsum' EULA and WIX graphics - which would make the product marketing guy puke... Oh well, more things to research... - Sam Dahan
Regarding your comment, I would suggest looking into creating themes to customize the standard WiX Bootstrapper Application, or you can create your own Managed Custom Bootstrapper Application and completely design your own UI. You can download the WiX source code and see how they created there own custom UI for the WiX installer (look for the WixBA project in the source). - BryanJ

3 Answers

2
votes

You can use the WIX v3.6 Bundle concept to handle this. You can read more about it here http://wix.sourceforge.net/manual-wix3/authoring_bundle_intro.htm

Basically you are packaging your WIX MSI and the EXE into a single WIX bundle package which can be then installed to the target machines.

0
votes

I also wanted to keep the UI from the MSI so I added this code to start an exe installer for hardware keys. I know it goes against MSI Best Practices but this is the only one I intend on breaking. Hope this helps.

<Property Id="WixShellExecTarget" Value="[#myapplication.exe]" />
<CustomAction Id="LaunchApplication" BinaryKey="WixCA" DllEntry="WixShellExec" Impersonate="yes" />

I then ran the custom action from a button click. Or you could schedule it to run after InstallFinalize.

0
votes

Mr. Ryan here :)

in case this is of use:

this is the WiX project I made, to install Report Viewer 2010 using GPO (Group Policy)

http://www.natureireland.com/Downloads/StackOverflow/oRV2010Installer.rar

note: I used WiX version: Windows Installer XML v3.5

regards

sean