[wix-users] Extensibility

[Christopher Painter]

I've been using <?define?> statements for the past 5 years to store per document meta data.  Technically it's valid WiX XML and gets compiled but never used.   Hopefully WiX never starts throwing errors that I defined a variable and never used it. :)  The meta is useful in store per-project settings to control business rules in IsWiX such as what rules should be followed when organizing files into components.


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From: wix-users <wix-users-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> on behalf of Rob Mensching <rob at firegiant.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 5, 2015 2:03 PM
To: WiX Toolset Users Mailing List
Subject: Re: [wix-users] Extensibility

WiX extensions do not have to output data to the final MSI (don't have to output any data at all).

You do need an Extension to prevent the compiler from reporting errors about the "foreign data" in the source code.

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-----Original Message-----
From: wix-users [mailto:wix-users-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org] On Behalf Of Christopher Painter
Sent: Thursday, November 5, 2015 12:00 PM
To: WiX Toolset Users Mailing List <wix-users at lists.wixtoolset.org>
Subject: Re: [wix-users] Extensibility

You said you didn't want it to influence the MSI.   To me this sounds like using a preprocessor XPI  as a meta tag.  Something like

<?define MyTag="foo"?>
<Feature.....>

You could do an XML query on your feature and then look for the XPI above it to get your additional meta for that feature.

To me a custom attribute on the Feature element would manfiest as a column in the feature table of the MSI.  A custom child element would manifest as a table with a join back to the Feature table.     My suggestion above would merely be source code meta and not compiled into the MSI at all.

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From: wix-users <wix-users-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> on behalf of Szentpáli, János <szentpalijanos at gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 5, 2015 1:41 PM
To: WiX Toolset Users Mailing List
Subject: Re: [wix-users] Extensibility

2015-11-05 21:37 keltezéssel, Douglas, Keith (STATCAN/STATCAN) írta:
> Does it really need to be in Feature? We too use an administrative attribute in our MSIs; but we just define a property, which proved to be useful.
Yes, I "need" it to function as a tag.
Have a couple of scripts going over sources, fragments, includes and it would be nice if those scripts could find certain information in the XML that is being loaded/parsed anyway.
Far easier to execute an extra x-query than to parse external databases that must be correlated with elements in XML files.
Plus it would be a good exercise to create such an extension.

Regards,
János

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