Typelib Generation and Installation with WiX
After asking about what Visual Studio does to register a COM Library, it became clear that VS did two things for COM registration:
- Registered the COM Library
- Creates and registers a Type Library
Visual Studio seems to do this registration using regasm.exe. For the first part (the direct COM registration) using tallow or heat (WiX 2.0 or WiX 3.0) seems to get all of the basic COM registration information correct.
However, what tallow/heat doesn't seem to do is set up a type library installation. It would be possible to create a custom action to do this with a WiX installer and regasm.exe, but invoking custom actions are not best practices when it comes to Microsoft installer based installers.
Upon further research, it looks like an msi has the ability to generate the type library upon installation. In fact, WiX seems to have direct support for it! In a file element, you can add a Typelib element. In fact, an article over here on wix has an example of filling out the TypeLib element with Interface elements.
It seems there's at least two required attributes to an Interface element:
- Id
- Name
Larry Osterman speaks about the other parts of the interface that need to be registered for a TypeLib in general, and this Interface entry seems to take care of the individual parts. Larry says we need to specify the ProxyStubClassId32 as "{00020424-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}", so we can easily add that.
Where to go from there and what to fill out for the various Interface elements has me stumped. I've gone ahead and added the TypeLib element to my wix file, and it successfully compiles. I'm a bit clueless as to how to set up the Interface elements though. What do we need to do to properly fill out the TypeLib element, and what apps or tools can I use to get it?
The answer below by wcoenen looks promising...I'm going to give it a shot.
Update: Posted my final solution below as an answer.
Answer
Here's the lazy man's way of solving this problem: Use heat from WiX 3.0.
If you have a type library generated automatically and installed via regasm, heat can take the .tlb as an argument in
heat file c:\my\path\to\my.tlb -out tlb.wxs
It will generate all the typelib and interface elements you need to register. This won't solve the problem of needing to know them ahead of time, and it won't solve the problem of GUIDs changing when the version of the assembly changes (even if the interface doesn't - which is the only time you're supposed to change it) but it will get you partway there.