bryanpjohnston

I’ve said previously that I generally prefer to implement major upgrades with each release and try not to worry about patching. I think it makes for a cleaner installation and is easier to manage. I mentioned in this post a way to update your installation by simply chaining an additional msi to your WiX bootstrapper. While that certainly is possible it feels a bit of a hack, and if you are fortunate enough to have authored your msi correctly from the beginning, you could use more traditional patch creation techniques. Until recently I haven’t had to create patches. While software companies are becoming more agile, there is a greater need to release software more often and deploy those updates online. I feel this creates a bigger need for patches. Furthermore, if you are developing a patch, you need an automated way of incorporating it into your build process so that it can be tested with each build.   After working through this process recently, I thought I would share a method of automatically generating a patch with each build of your installer project. Read the rest of this entry »

With the upcoming release of WiX 3.6, I like to share about how I have used Burn to implement patching using a process I like to call lazy patching. Now I’ve never been a big fan of creating patches. I prefer to implement major upgrades and change the version number and product code with every build.  That said, I have a requirement to be able to install a patch and have only a few files get modified. Since I am versioning each dll with every build, I can’t use traditional patching techniques of comparing two .msis because each binary would get modified (even if by only a few bits).

Thanks to Burn, we can easily create a Bundle that includes all of our prereqs and packages to be included in a single product deployment. In my WiX Bootstrapper project, I include a RelatedBundle element and specify the UpgradeCode as its Id. So version 1.0.0.0 of MyProduct will have the following bits in Bundle.wxs:

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