Wix Toolset how to copy to folder with version in path

Question

I'm using Wix toolset v 3.11 in VS2019 to create a setup for our application. In order to ease maintenance, I need to copy the installer files to a folder with the version in its path.

Basically what I thought was to use a post build event where I would copy the files to a \$(BootstrapPackageVersion)\$(Configuration)\ directory, but I am not able to find such variable.

I tried to extract the version from the .exe package (since it gets its version from the MSI package that itself get its version from the original application, as intended) with the following code in the .wixproj file:

  </PropertyGroup>
    <Target Name="AfterBuild">
        <GetAssemblyIdentity AssemblyFiles="$(TargetPath)">
            <Output TaskParameter="Assemblies" ItemName="AssemblyVersions" />
        </GetAssemblyIdentity>
        <CreateProperty Value="$(TargetDir)/%(AssemblyVersions.Version)/">
            <Output TaskParameter="Value" PropertyName="CustomTargetName" />
        </CreateProperty>
        <Copy SourceFiles="$(TargetDir)/*" DestinationFolder="$(CustomTargetName)"/>
    </Target>

But it fails with the following error:

Cannot get assembly name for "[Path]\Setup.exe". Could not load file or assembly 'Setup.exe' or one of its dependencies. The module was expected to contain an assembly manifest.

I saw that there is a property, $(WixBundleVersion), but it doesn't seems to be available to use in build events.

Basically what I want to achieve is a fairly simple thing: take the output from the bootstrapper project and copy everything to another path that include the package version. It is possible?

Answer 1

The way I do this in my wix project is to output setup.exe into it's default folder and then run an AfterBuild and copy it to the final artifacts directory

in wixproj:

<Target>
...
    <GetAssemblyIdentity AssemblyFiles="..\MyApp.App\bin\$(Configuration)\net5.0\FrameworkDep\win-$(Platform)\Publish\MyApp.App.dll">
        <Output TaskParameter="Assemblies" ItemName="AssemblyVersion" />
    </GetAssemblyIdentity>
    <PropertyGroup>
        <DefineConstants>BuildVersion=%(AssemblyVersion.Version)</DefineConstants>
    </PropertyGroup>
...
</Target>
<Target Name="AfterBuild">
    <Copy SourceFiles=".\bin\$(Configuration)\en-us\$(OutputName).msi" DestinationFiles=".\bin\$(Configuration)\$(OutputName)_%(AssemblyVersion.Version).msi" />
</Target>

This assigns BuildVersion which you can then use in your wxs files and AssemblyVersion which you can use in the wixproj with %(AssemblyVersion.Version)

the AfterBuild section is copying the msi to MyApp_1.2.3.msi

in my wxs file I can use:

<Product Id="*" Name="My App" Language="1033" 
       Version="$(var.BuildVersion)>

This is then using the build version from above so I just version control MyApp.App project.