Details of the ProjectReference Publish property

[glen-nicol]

Hi there, wix 4 is amazing for simple installers compared to wix 3. Wonderful work!

But I have come upon a wrinkle. This code worked for initial bring up:

<ProjectReference Include="..\Path_to\ProjectName.csproj" />
...
<Files Include="$(var.ProjectName.TargetDir)/**/*">
    <Exclude  Files="Output.exe" />
</Files>
...
<Component>
    <File
        Id="MainExe"
        Source="$(var.ProjectName.TargetDir)\Output.exe" />
</Component>

But then I realized I needed the output of my published target. I found an SO article referencing the Publish property on ProjectRefrence. So I add that, and now I get WIX0369 errors about duplicate component guids on the MainExe.

Luckily, I found this other discussion about publish whose syntax below moved me past the errors but it does bring up questions.

<BindPath Include="$(MSBuildThisFileDirectory)\obj\$(Platform)\$(Configuration)\publish\ProjectName" >
  <BindName>BinPublishPath</BindName>
</BindPath>

<Files Include="!(bindpath.BinPublishPath)\**\*"> // NOTE: backslashes ended up being significant

Questions:

1. Where is the Publish property documented? Its not part of MSbuild docs or wix docs
2. Is the TargetDir suppose to change to the publish directory?
   Doesn't seem so based on the bindTracking file pointing at bin\x64\Debug\net8-windows10.0.17763.0. But also seems natural for it to do that.
3. Is there another variable that points to the publish directory? Or is the custom bindpath method the current prescribed way to do this?
4. Where were the duplicates coming from? I don't have any harvesting setup in this project.

[robmen]

1. This is high on my personal list to add to the WiX documentation (it is a WiX feature, not an MSBuild feature... but it'd be cool if they added it so we didn't have to. 😄). However, I my "content work days" keep filling with other content work (like Deployment Dojo: Season 2).
2. No, it remains static to match the underlying MSBuild property. You want it one way, someone else will want it the other. In general, I recommend using bindpaths instead (see next bullet).
3. There is a bindpath for every project reference. You don't need to add your own. Use !(bindpath.ProjectName). It does change to match Publish.
4. There isn't enough information to know what is being duplicated, but my first random guess would be your Exclude isn't excluding. First, look in the MSI and see what is duplicated.

[glen-nicol]

Awesome tip on #3. Thanks Rob!

As for 4, since it was an error I didn't think an installer was generated to check. At any rate, using bindpath to gather the files doesn't seem to have the duplicate problem.

[robmen]

FYI: We keep discussions open so they are more easily found by others.