How can I use heat.exe to include a constantly changing directory-tree?

so I have successfully used the WiX extension heat.exe to create static fragment of my directory tree I want to install using this tutorial (which is really great by the way!)...

but since its a huge project and there are constant changes being made as I write... it doesn't help much to have a static fragment which you would have to edit and include into the .wxs each time a change is made... I have searched the web yet not found anything useful on this matter... only the hint that using HeatDirectory Task and/or HeatDirectory Target could lead to a solution?

Is there anybody that has some more knowledge in this matter or has already solved a similar problem? I would greatly appreciate your help!

1 Answer

We have a WiX project in Visual Studio and we use a pre build step to create our .wxs files.

It creates a temp folder, copies all the files that we would like to have (in this case the result of a Publish action) and then calls heat with this directory and some other info as parameters.

call rd /s /q "$(ProjectDir)gatheredSetupFilesDir"
call md "$(ProjectDir)gatheredSetupFilesDir"
call xcopy "$(SolutionDir)..\ProjectDir\Published\*" "$(ProjectDir)gatheredSetupFilesDir" /S /Y
call "$(WIX)bin\heat.exe" dir "$(ProjectDir)gatheredSetupFilesDir" -cg ProjectComponents -dr INSTALLFOLDER -ag -srd -sfrag -scom -suid -sreg -var var.gatheredSetupFilesDir -out "$(ProjectDir)Includes\ProjectComponents.wxs"