Paraffin 1.04 – A New Switch and Easier Updates

If you're using WiX 2.0, my Paraffin tool can help you automate some of your setup chores. To read more about Paraffin, see the three part article, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Thanks to Matthew Goos who sent me the patch, there's a new –dirref when creating the initial .WXS file. That allows you specify the DirectoryRef element Id value. The default is INSTALLDIR.

When updating an existing file, I now allow you to specify both –ext and –direXclude switches so you can add additional extensions and directories to ignore. Any new ignored extensions or directories are added into the output file comment section so they are there the next time you update.

Thanks to all of you who have downloaded Paraffin. If you're using Paraffin, please let me know as I'm curious if others find it useful. Numerous people have asked if there's a WiX 3.0 compatible version on Paraffin. Right now there isn't but I'll update Paraffin to support WiX 3.0 as soon as the WiX team declares a stable 3.0.

Grab the latest Paraffin here. As always, let me know if there are any features you'd like to see or bugs that need squashing.

On Jul 11 2008 2:42 PMBy jrobbins
With 4 Comments John Robbins, Wix, Paraffin

Comments (4)

  2. Oscar Sillani

    This is a great tool (even better than Heat in Wix 3).
    Two additional options would make it perfect for my needs:
    - replace the ... wrapper with and ... wrapper (so that output file can be included in a main file)
    - switch off the Name+LongName output (in Wix3 the Name attribute is used both for short and long names)

  3. Oscar Sillani

    Just three additional feature requests:

    - An option to add a Compressed="yes" attribute to each tag.

    - An option not to create the directory specified with the -dir parameter (i.e. either omit the first element inside the element, or omit the Name attribute in that first element).

    - An option to ignore or keep empty folders. Right now Paraffin outputs an empty element, which is just ignored by MSI at runtime. Instead a Component element should be placed inside the Directory element, and a CreateFolder element should be placed inside the Component element, like the following:






  4. Jason Birch

    Just chiming in... I have found a need for a couple of Oscar's requests:

    - Not creating the parent Dir element (I need to install the contents of that directory to a differently named directory)

    - Creating empty directories

    And I would also like to see a version that works with 3.0, but making the changes myself and building isn't too hard.

    Apart from those minor issues, this tool is GREAT; really reduces the amount I time I have to spend maintaining file lists.

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