How to Enable WiX Projects in Visual Studio 2015

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Chris Schiffhauer picture Chris Schiffhauer · Sep 30, 2014 · Viewed 72.4k times · Source

When I go the the New Project dialog in Visual Studio 2015, Windows Installer XML isn't available. How can I enable WiX projects in Visual Studio 2015?

Answer

Chris Schiffhauer picture Chris Schiffhauer · Sep 30, 2014

Update 2015-09-08: WiX Toolset 3.10 is released with official support for Visual Studio 2015 editions. It is available for download from wixtoolset.org.

You can manually enable Visual Studio 2015 compatibility with WiX 3.9 or earlier:

  1. Copy
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\WiX to
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\WiX

  2. Then execute as Administrator:

    "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\devenv" /setup

    enter image description here

When you open Visual Studio 2015, WiX 3.9 and earlier projects will be compatible.

enter image description here

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