3ed828da1b
Someone on https://github.com/wixtoolset/issues/issues/4381 found this repository recently and judged it to be abandoned, whereas in fact it's been working reliably for me for nearly a decade and I just don't have to fix bugs in it very often. Looking at the README, I wonder if the reason they thought it was abandoned is that _that_ hadn't been updated in a very long time! It still said 'very new', 'only ever tested on Ubuntu 14.04' (which was true at the beginning of the project's life), and 'only supports Python 2' (an outright untruth). I've brought it up to date, and made it look more like 'stable' than 'abandoned immediately after creation'.
95 lines
3.5 KiB
Text
95 lines
3.5 KiB
Text
WiX 3 cross-building support for Linux
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======================================
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This directory contains a suite of Linux shared libraries and
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supporting scripts to allow parts of the WiX 3 toolset to run on
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Linux, generating MSI Windows installer files without depending on
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Windows itself, any official Windows DLLs, or even Wine.
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Requirements
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------------
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This system has been tested only on Ubuntu, but it has been running
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reliably for me on all stable versions of Ubuntu from 14.04 to 22.04.
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To run, you will need some Ubuntu packages installed:
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- 'mono-runtime' (to run the main CLR executables from WiX itself)
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- 'cabextract' and 'msitools' (the libraries in this suite will
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expect to be able to invoke them via fork/exec)
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- Python 3 to run the wrapper.py and makecab.py scripts that are part
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of this source base.
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To compile it, you will also need gcc and autotools.
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(There may be other package dependencies I haven't spotted. I've only
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tested this on my own machine and haven't done a full analysis of what
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might have already been installed here that I didn't realise I was
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depending on. If you find problems along these lines, please help make
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this section more complete.)
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Installation
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------------
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First, get the official WiX distribution. I downloaded the latest WiX
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3 zip file at the time, which was a zip file called wix310-binaries.zip.
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Unpack that zip file into a directory of your choice, which I will
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refer to below as $WIX_INSTALL_DIR.
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Now build and install the stuff in _this_ directory into that same
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directory, by running
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- ./autogen.sh (assuming you checked this source tree out of git
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rather than installing a tarball of it, so that 'configure' won't
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already exist)
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- ./configure --bindir=$WIX_INSTALL_DIR
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- make
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- make install
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This will install some Python scripts and some .so files into the same
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location $WIX_INSTALL_DIR where you unpacked the WiX zip file. In
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particular, you should find two files 'candle' and 'light' - actually
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symlinks to wrapper.py - dropped into that directory, alongside the
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candle.exe and light.exe that came from the WiX distribution.
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Running it
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----------
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You should now be able to run $WIX_INSTALL_DIR/candle and
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$WIX_INSTALL_DIR/light more or less as if they were the ordinary WiX
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'candle' and 'light' programs.
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Ordinary WiX installer source should basically work, except that as a
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consequence of running the WiX CLR code on a different OS, this system
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will not tolerate backslashes used as directory separators in
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pathnames in the .wxs file. You'll need to replace any of those with
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forward slashes first (which in my experience does not break
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compatibility with WiX run in the usual way).
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Those scripts will run candle.exe and light.exe under Mono, and
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arrange to load my .so files in place of the native-code Windows DLLs
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that those programs need; the .so files will in turn call out to
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cabextract, msibuild and my makecab.py script as necessary.
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Limitations
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-----------
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This system was set up for the stable WiX 3. It's never been tested
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with WiX 4.
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It is extremely possible that some more advanced features of WiX will
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not work in this system. I will be interested to hear about them, if
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so, but I may not have time and energy to fix them; patches would be
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preferable to plain bug reports.
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Licence
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-------
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The contents of this directory are copyright 2017 Simon Tatham, except
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for md5.c, which contains code from PuTTY written in 1999 (also
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copyright Simon Tatham). It is redistributable under the MIT licence.
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See the file LICENCE for the full licence text.
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