dactivllc/docker-wix

Docker container for creating Windows MSI packages using WiX Toolset

Docker Wix

This repository contains the Docker build files for a container that enables building Windows MSI packages from any system supporting Docker.

Want to build MSI packages on macOS or Linux? Read on.

Docker Hub

The precompiled images are available at hub.docker.com/r/dactiv/wix.

docker pull dactiv/wix

Requirements

The only requirement for building or running these containers is a working installation of Docker.

Usage

The container build exposes each of the WiX Toolset executables in the PATH. This means that running WiX's candle.exe is simple as:

docker run --rm dactiv/wix candle

In order to do anything useful with WiX, you need to mount a volume to expose the necessary files to the WiX tools. The default working directory of the container is /wix, so it is easiest to mount the host's working directory to that path:

docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/wix dactiv/wix candle sample.wxs

Example

A small sample configuration is provided in ./sample. To build the sample.msi, run the following commands:

cd sample
docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/wix dactiv/wix candle sample.wxs
docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/wix dactiv/wix light sample.wixobj -sval

The sample.msi will now be in the sample directory.

Known Issues

light fails when running validation

docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/wix dactiv/wix light sample.wixobj
Windows Installer XML Toolset Linker version
Copyright (c) .NET Foundation and contributors. All rights reserved.

light.exe : error LGHT0216 : An unexpected Win32 exception with error code 0x65B occurred: Function failed.

The workaround for this is to disable validation with the -sval flag:

docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/wix dactiv/wix light sample.wixobj -sval

docker-wix's Issues

Compression isn't working

I have an MSI installer setup which when running on Windows creates around ~10MB of MSI installer file whereas same using the docker using wine creates around ~45MB of MSI installer file. It seems like compression isn't working simply. I tried light with -dcl:high as well but no luck.

"File Not found" error

Hello and thanks a lot for this docker :)

I was trying to pack this https://github.com/Velocidex/velociraptor/blob/master/docs/wix/custom.xml as an MSI but I get an error when executing the "light" command. On Windows the same custom.xml builds succesfully using Wix and no error are generated.

`# docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/wix dactiv/wix light custom.wixobj -ext WixUtilExtension -v
WARNING: The requested image's platform (linux/386) does not match the detected host platform (linux/amd64) and no specific platform was requested
Windows Installer XML Toolset Linker version
Copyright (c) .NET Foundation and contributors. All rights reserved.

Updating file information.
Creating cabinet files.
There will be '4' threads used to produce CAB files.
Creating cabinet 'C:\temp\tromfpph#Sample.cab'.
Generating database.
light.exe : error LGHT0216 : An unexpected Win32 exception with error code 0x2 occurred: File not found.
`

The previous "candle" file runs without problem and a WIXOBJ is generated.

Any idea?