WiX Installer
The files in this directory are used to produce an MSI installer using the WiX Toolset (http://wixtoolset.org/).
The MSI installers require elevated (admin) privileges due to the installation of MSVC CRT libraries into the Windows system store. See the Inno Setup installers in the inno sibling directory for installers that do not have this requirement.
Requirements
Building the WiX installers requires a Windows machine. The following dependencies must be installed:
- Python 2.7 (download from https://www.python.org/downloads/)
- Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7 (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=44266)
- Python 3.5+ (to run the packaging.py script)
Building
The packaging.py script automates the process of producing an MSI installer. It manages fetching and configuring non-system dependencies (such as py2exe, gettext, and various Python packages).
The script requires an activated Visual C++ 2008 command prompt. A shortcut to such a prompt was installed with Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7. From your Start Menu, look for Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler Package for Python 2.7 then launch either Visual C++ 2008 32-bit Command Prompt or Visual C++ 2008 64-bit Command Prompt.
From the prompt, change to the Mercurial source directory. e.g. cd c:\src\hg.
Next, invoke packaging.py to produce an MSI installer. You will need to supply the path to the Python interpreter to use.:
$ py -3 contrib\packaging\packaging.py \ wix --python c:\python27\python.exe
Note
The script validates that the Visual C++ environment is active and that the architecture of the specified Python interpreter matches the Visual C++ environment. An error is raised otherwise.
If everything runs as intended, dependencies will be fetched and configured into the build sub-directory, Mercurial will be built, and an installer placed in the dist sub-directory. The final line of output should print the name of the generated installer.
Additional options may be configured. Run packaging.py wix --help to see a list of program flags.
Relationship to TortoiseHG
TortoiseHG uses the WiX files in this directory.
The code for building TortoiseHG installers lives at https://bitbucket.org/tortoisehg/thg-winbuild and is maintained by Steve Borho (steve@borho.org).
When changing behavior of the WiX installer, be sure to notify the TortoiseHG Project of the changes so they have ample time provide feedback and react to those changes.