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I have written an installer using WIX for a product, which uses:

  • custom extensions
  • custom actions
  • customized ui dialogs

etc.

I noticed Microsoft Office Installer uses WPF and was wandering how I would go about creating these custom looking installers? does anyone know how i would go about this, I cant seem to find any information on it or examples.

I have been told Wix Burn can do what I want but I can't find any examples.

pnuts
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pengibot
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2 Answers2

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Download the WiX latest (weekly) release source code at http://wixtoolset.org/releases and look at the project located in src\Setup\WixBA. The WPF you write will be the bootstrapper UI which references the WiX bootstrapper engine (Burn).

I also created a minimal example that I blogged about here. Please note that it is a bare bones example to get someone started. Using the WiX source as an example is better because it's complete and robust.

BryanJ
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  • Also look at this question [How to create custom UI for MSI in Wix?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2335354/how-to-create-custom-ui-for-msi-in-wix) the most interesting part of which is the link to [Let's talk about Burn](http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2009/7/14/Lets-talk-about-Burn) post. – Alexey Ivanov Mar 06 '12 at 06:11
  • Thanks for the comments, had a look at links and can see that burn is not yet ready. The new WIX Installer seems to use it however and Rob M has said they are getting closer so fingers crossed it will come soon. For now I will just try some basic setups to get use to it. – pengibot Mar 09 '12 at 15:55
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    Visual Studio uses Burn for its installation as well. Rob said the other day [here](http://dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=747) that he thinks it will be released in about 6 months. While that may or may not be accurate, it seems pretty stable and I've been working on my own custom bootstrapper application for a few weeks now. – BryanJ Mar 09 '12 at 17:51
  • When I open RootView.xaml in WixBA project, designer view shows no layout reporting 'Problem Loading'. In Error List it says "Unable to load the metadata for assembly 'WiXBA'. This assembly may have been downloaded from the web. See http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=179545. The following error was encountered during load: Could not load file or assembly 'WixBA' or one of its dependencies. Strong name signature could not be verified. The assembly may have been tampered with, or it was delay signed but not fully signed with the correct private key. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131045)" – David Johns Apr 19 '13 at 07:08
  • @sky, if you downloaded the latest weekly build and had issues, maybe it worth trying to get the latest stable release (WiX 3.7). At the time I wrote this answer, v3.6 hadn't been released and Burn was in development...so try released build and see if you get the same issue. – BryanJ Apr 19 '13 at 11:27
  • go to https://github.com/RukshanLakshitha/wix3 and clone the repo. You can find all the examples you need. :) – Rukshan Dangalla Feb 24 '17 at 10:40
  • I have a problem with detect previous version. Each installation with leter version ends with the appearance of a new program instead of overwriting or removing the old one. The OnDetectPackageComplete method does not detect e.State == PackageState.Obsolete. – Silny ToJa Jun 08 '20 at 09:15
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https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=MarkusWehrle.Laika42WiXToolsetExtension

this is an extension provided by Laika. download it embed an .msi in its bundle and execute the application , go through the code u will be able to understand everything about WPF Burn Bootstrapper

  • in bundle file -
    MsiPackage Id="abc" Compressed="yes" Visible="no" SourceFile="_Dependencies\abc.msi"

    ----> this will come under opening\closing a Tag like <...>, stackoverflow is not allowing to put the tag

put the msi in application folder where Bin folder resides or create a _Dependencies(name it as u like) folder and put the msi there

VIVEK KUMAR
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