How can I exclude files from being harvested with heat (WiX 3.5)?

Question

I would like to harvest a folder with a lot of files by using heat.exe. But instead of harvesting all files, I would like to exclude specific file extensions like "*.txt" or something like that. How can I do this?

Solution 1

I think the only option for now is to harvest the entire folder and apply a transform to the resulting .wxs file (see -t:<xsl> switch) to exclude what is not required (txt files in your case). However, I didn't try the 3.5 version of heat (judging based on the 3.0), but I don't think there are changes in this area.

Solution 2

I'm not a huge proponent of this pattern. How do you ensure change control when using a non-deterministic process? How do you know a file that appeared in a directory really should ship in a product and how do you know a file that vanished from the directory shouldn't break a build? How do you know you are breaking the component rules and creating servicability issues?

I used to do dynamic file linking in the 1990's because it was "easy" but I can remember it biting me many times and I haven't done it ever since.

I know Bob Arnson used to agree with this view point:

http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg03420.html

But now in WiX 3.5 I'm starting to see capabilities that support dynamic linking and I just don't understand why they would go that way. I'd much rather update a WXS file and check it back into source control then risk putting my deployment process on autopilot.

Solution 3

Instead of trying to figure out how to harvest selected files from of a folder, I use a before build action to populate a folder with just the files that I want harvested. The following workflow has been working for me:

1. Delete a "files" if it exists
2. Create a "files" folder
3. Copy the files to the "files" folder. I use the robocopy build action, that gives me enough control to specify which files to include or exclude.
4. Harvest the entire folder.

I have it set to run the harvest action conditionally, just for debug builds. Release builds are generated from our TFS server and use the generated .wxs from source control. It should be OK to run harvest on the build server, but it's an extra step and not having it run eliminates the "non-deterministic process" problem described by Christopher Painter. Other than that one step, the same steps execute on the build server as they do on my dev machine.