Windows Installer XML

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Windows Installer XML

WiX logo (2016, black) .svg
Basic data

developer .NET Foundation
Current  version 3.11.2 (Stable)
(September 18, 2019)
operating system Windows
programming language C ++ , C #
category Software engineering
License Microsoft Reciprocal License
German speaking No
wixtoolset.org

Windows Installer XML ( WiX Toolset for short ) is a collection of programs for creating Windows Installer packages ( MSI , MSP , MSM and MST files) with the help of XML files.

WiX was originally developed by Microsoft and is the first Microsoft program to be released as free software . When it was registered with SourceForge on March 31, 2004 , it caused quite a stir. In September 2012, the WiX project was transferred from Microsoft to the Outercurve Foundation and again to the .NET Foundation in May 2016 . The source code of the project has been managed on GitHub since March 2014 , previously this took place at SourceForge and CodePlex .

A graphical user interface only exists in the form of a plug-in for Visual Studio called Votive.

Program structure

WiX is made up of different components, the names of which are derived from a play on words with "wicks" (English for candle wicks):

  • Candle , the compiler , is used to compile the XML documents into object files containing symbols and references to symbols.
  • Light , the linker , takes one or more object files and connects the references in the object files with the correct symbols from other object files. Light is also responsible for managing the binary files, processing them correctly and ultimately generating an MSI or MSM file from them.
  • Lit (cf. literature), the library tool, is an optional tool that can be used to combine several object files into libraries that can be parsed with Light .
  • Burn , the burn engine is a bootstrapper for the pre-installation of necessary basics such as missing runtime environments or libraries, it also enables multiple installation packages (for example MSI and MSP files or classic EXE installations) to be stringed together.
  • Dark , the decompiler , takes existing MSI and MSM files and creates XML documents that represent the package.
  • Tallow (English Tallow ) and Heat (English Heat) - Tallow is a tool to generate XML scripts for WiX file lists and to transfer them to a directory tree. It produces a WiX "fragment" which can be combined with other WiX source code files at compile time . From WiX 3.0 this is done by the so-called heat tool, which is supposed to work even better. There is also an unofficial version of Tallow, known as "Mallow", which has synchronization capabilities and improved component ID.

Further components in the 3.x branch are the tools Insignia , Melt , Torch , Smoke , Pyro , WixCop , WixUnit , Lux and Nit (see brief descriptions).

safety

Executable installers created with versions prior to 3.10.2 have known security vulnerabilities.

See also

Alternative applications for creating installation packages for Microsoft Windows:

literature

  • Nick Ramirez: WiX 3.6: A Developer's Guide to Windows Installer XML , Packt Publishing, Birmingham 2012 (2nd ed.), ISBN 978-1-78216-042-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The wix Open Source Project on Open Hub: Languages ​​Page . In: Open Hub . (accessed on July 18, 2018).
  2. ↑ http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2012/8/14/outercurve-foundation-and-wix-toolset-together-at-last/
  3. ↑ https://www.dotnetfoundation.org/blog/2016/05/04/wix-toolset-welcome
  4. ↑ github.com: WiX Toolset
  5. ↑ WiX project page on CodePlex ( Memento from December 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/manual/v3/overview/alltools.html
  7. ↑ WiX v3.10.2 released
  8. ↑ BugTraq: Executable installers are vulnerable ^ WEVIL (case 3): WiX Toolset's bootstrapper "burn.exe"