[wix-users] Create symbolic links with WiX & Windows Installer

[Rob Mensching]

Symbolic links are particularly nasty because you need a special privilege in Windows that the Windows Installer doesn't have.

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 Short replies here. Complete answers over there: http://www.firegiant.com/


-----Original Message-----
From: wix-users [mailto:wix-users-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org] On Behalf Of Jay Michaud
Sent: Thursday, September 1, 2016 4:42 PM
To: WiX Toolset Users Mailing List <wix-users at lists.wixtoolset.org>
Subject: [wix-users] Create symbolic links with WiX & Windows Installer

I am building an installer for a product that needs some symbolic links created during installation. (Unfortunately, shortcuts will not work for this particular app.) I'm pretty sure that creating symbolic links is not a native function of Windows Installer, but I would love to be shown that I am wrong about that! A web search found a two-year-old thread from wix-users<http://stackoverflow.com/a/14151252/8613> asking about doing this by shelling out to cmd.exe in order to run mklink, as well as a Stack Overflow question and answer describing the same method<http://stackoverflow.com/a/14151252/8613>. This method seems...distasteful. I don't see how this method would handle adding/removing features or repair operations. It is certainly not data-driven<http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2007/9/13/zataoca-custom-actions-should-be-data-driven/>. Does anyone have a better method for creating symbolic links with WiX?


Thank you,

Jay Michaud