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How Do I Use Heat EXE on WiX?

Last updated on January 3, 2023 @ 9:25 pm

When you have WiX installed, you’ll find a directory called “bin” in your WiX installation directory. Copy the “Heat.exe” file from the “bin” directory to any other location – for example, your desktop.

Now open a command prompt and change to the directory where you copied “Heat.exe”. To create an XML file that contains the directory structure of a particular directory, use the following command:

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heat dir "C:\My Documents\My music\iTunes\iTunes Music" -gg -scom -sreg -sfrag -srd -suid -sw1033 -out music.xml

Replace "C:\My Documents\My music\iTunes\iTunes Music" with the path to the directory whose structure you want to capture. The "-gg", "-scom", "-sreg", "-sfrag", "-srd", and "-suid" parameters are all optional; they instruct Heat to generate GUIDs, component references, registry entries, fragments, shortcuts with relative paths, and unique identifiers for the files it encounters, respectively.

The "-sw1033" parameter tells Heat to use US English culture information when it generates component IDs; if you omit this parameter or use a different culture code, your installer may display error messages during installation. The "-out music.xml" parameter specifies the name of the XML file that will be created; you can use any name you like for this file.

After you run the command, examine the XML file to see how Heat represents various types of files and directories:

PRO TIP: If you are considering using Heat EXE on WiX, be aware that this tool is no longer supported by WiX. Use at your own risk.

The "<b>, <u>, <i>, <sup>, <sub>, <small>, <big>, <ins>, <del>" tags are all used for styling text in HTML pages.

Drew Clemente

Drew Clemente

Devops & Sysadmin engineer. I basically build infrastructure online.