How can I pass progress information from a custom ExePackage back to the burn engine?

Question

I have a custom ExePackage in my bundle, which runs for a non-trivial amount of time. I'd like to report back a progress indicator to the burn engine so that the progress bar keeps showing progress while the ExePackage is executing.

The ExePackage element has a 'Protocol' attribute which appears to provide a way to communicate "extended progress and error reporting" with the options: "none", "burn", and "netfx4" but I haven't found any documentation for how to implement any of those protocols.

Outward

Answer 1

This may not add much, but I found this in the WiX 3.8 source code (in \src\tools\wix\Xsd\wix.xsd).

• none - The executable package does not support a communication protocol.
• burn - The executable package is another Burn bundle and supports the Burn communication protocol.
• netfx4 - The executable package implements the .NET Framework v4.0 communication protocol.

So it looks like it is an option if the ExePackage is another Burn bundle or a .NET Framework 4.0 executable.

Franny

I've noticed those too, but was never able to find any specifics on how they work. – Outward

Am not able to make it work for the .NET framework 4.0, 4.5 or the Isolated shell 2013 atleast ! – Ader