WIX Project cannot load with pre-build-event specified

Question

After much trouble I have a heat.exe command string that should run and put the files of a folder into a WXS file.

It looks like this

heat dir "$(var.SolutionDir)Web\obj\$(var.MyProject.Configuration)Package" -gg -g1 -cg PACKAGEFILES sreg -dr DEPLOYFOLDER -var "$(var.SolutionDir)Web\obj\$(var.MyProject.Configuration)Package" -out "$(var.SolutionDir)WebInstaller\PackageFragment.wxs"

I used this to get it: http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/mladenp/archive/2010/02/23/WiX-3-Tutorial-Generating-filedirectory-fragments-with-Heat.exe.aspx

However when I try to copy that into my pre-build-event box under "Properties->Build Events" for my WIX project in VS2010 - VS2010 crashes and I cannot load my project until I delete the command directly from the project file xml code.

I now have two questions:

Is this command string correct?
Why does my project crash like that?

Thank you all in advance.

Rob Mensching · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-22 16:58:52Z

1

The project crashes because Visual Studio attempts to interpret the $(stuff) as MSBuild properties and gets all confused and crashes.

You'll want to convert that command-line to MSBuild syntax by directly editing the .wixproj file. That way you bypass the parsing code in Visual Studio that crashes. Something like:

<Exec Command='heat dir "..\Web\obj\$(Configuration)Package" -gg -g1 -cg PACKAGEFILES sreg -dr DEPLOYFOLDER -var "..\Web\obj\$(Configuration)Package" -out "..\WebInstaller\PackageFragment.wxs"'

Note: $(var.SolutionDir) is only available when building inside Visual Studio so I recommend not using it (in the example above, I made it a relative path).

answered May 22, 2013 at 16:58

Rob Mensching

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2 Comments

Martin Clemens Bloch Over a year ago

Would it make sense to add a Heat command attribute to the fragment element so it would create itself at compile time?

Rob Mensching Over a year ago

No because the compile phase doesn't touch the disk today.

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