Package existing exe and folder with Wix?

Question

I have a folder containing an exe file and a bunch of other files and a couple other folders. I want to be able to either:

A) Package this all into an installer

or

B) Package the exe and the other files into one singular exe file.

From what I've read, I'm not sure how I'd accomplish either of these with WIX, and I'm 99% sure it's not possible with WIX. Before I dismiss the possibility, I'd like to ask experienced people if I'm right or wrong.

If I can't use WIX, Is there a better alternative?

Thanks for all help.

Answer 1

WiX / Burn: WiX / Burn can indeed make MSI installers or setup.exe wrappers, but it is not trivial to use the toolkit for inexperienced people, and if you have never made a setup before there will be a learning curve. WiX quick start tips.

Burn: Burn is the WiX toolkit's bootstrapper / downloader / chainger tool which allows multiple MSI or setup.exe files to be run in sequence. It allows the creation of a setup.exe which wraps all installer components. Not trivial to learn and use.

Commercial Tools: Quick descriptions of commercial tools Advanced Installer, InstallShield, PACE Suite and some other tools can be found here: Brief descriptions of deployment tools.

And a more elaborate presentation: How to create windows installer.

Answer 2

WIX is highly configurable, and therefore requires some overhead to learn, but it is also very well documented, and gives pretty direct access to windows API's, which are also very well documented.

Packing Existing Files It is 100% possible to package your files + dependencies into an installer with WIX.

There is a tutorial

Building and Packaging There is also integration with Visual studio, allowing you to build and run WIX as part of your build.

If you are not using visual studio, that is fine, you can package things with WIX directly, here is Another tutorial

GUI Installer Creators If you are completely against the idea of creating your own WIX files and learning the tool set, Advanced installer is a pretty vanilla alternative with a nice GUI

If you really are against making any kind of installer, you can also zip everything up and distribute it that way, can possibly automate this using python.