Building WinMerge MSI Installer

MSI installer is still in heavy development and is highly experimental. DO NOT use it to install WinMerge to production environment!

Needed programs:

Installer script:

The main installer script is in Installer/WIX folder: WinMerge.wxs. This file includes other needed files.

Folder structure and files needed:

First make sure you have all needed files compiled and available:

These files are produced by compiling WinMerge, documentation etc, but that's not subject of this document, refer to Compiling.html, readme-manual.html and Translations.html.

In addition you will need Microsoft C- and MFC-runtime merge modules. Those files are not distributes with WinMerge. By default we use VS2008 merge modules from the %CommonProgramFiles%\Merge Modules folder:

Folder structure

Copy or move the files into the following layout:

Running WIX tools to create installer

WinMerge.wxs (in WIX folder) is script used to create WinMerge MSI installer. Other tools and IDEs can be used also. For example WixEdit or SharpDevelop.

Building with MSBuild

Open the Visual Studio command prompt and CD to Installer/WIX -folder. Run command:

 msbuild.exe WinMerge.wixproj
There are two commonly used parameters: For example:
 msbuild.exe WinMerge.wixproj /p:Platform=x86,ProductVersion=1.0.2

If the compile succeeds you have WinMerge-[platform]-Setup.msi files in Build\WiX\Release\folder's subfolders.

Test installer!