[WiX-users] Heat failing with VS2010

[Daniel M. <Dan...@Qu...>]

To whom it may concern,

In VS2010, I turned on the Harvest option for a Reference in a Wix merge module project with the Project Output Groups set to Content in order to produce a list of the 100s if not 1000s of Content Files I have in the referenced VS2010 project. However, heat.exe fails with the following output:

Microsoft (R) Windows Installer Xml Toolset Harvester version 3.5.2519.0
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Program Files\Windows Installer XML v3.5\bin\Heat.exe project K:\quarc\trunk\development\hardware\hil_c_api_examples\hil_c_api_examples.vcxproj -configuration Release -directoryid INSTALLLOCATION -platform Win32 -pog Binaries -pog Symbols -pog Sources -pog Content -pog Satellites -pog Documents -projectname hil_c_api_examples -ag -sfrag -out obj\Release\_hil_c_api_examples.wxs
heat.exe(0,0): error HEAT5313: Build error during harvesting: c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.Targets(1636,9): The target "CreateManifestResourceNames" does not exist in the project.

Two things I notice is that despite setting the Project Output Groups to Content, it still invoked heat with -pog Binaries -pog Symbols etc. Second, it is using .NET Framework v4.0.30319. Is that the wrong version of .NET for heat 3.5.2519.0?

If I create a pre-build event command to invoke heat instead, heat does not fail. However, it produces absolutely nothing in the ComponentGroup for the Content files either. The fragment for the Content files it produces is:

    <Fragment>
        <ComponentGroup Id="hil_c_api_examples.Content" />
    </Fragment>

It did produce appropriate output for the binaries of the project. The pre-build command I invoked was:

"C:\Program Files\Windows Installer XML v3.5\bin\heat.exe" project "K:\quarc\trunk\development\hardware\hil_c_api_examples\hil_c_api_examples.vcxproj" -configuration Release -platform Win32 -ag -pog Content -pog Binaries -scom -sref -sfrag -out hil_c_api_examples_content.wxs

I've tried a variety of options, but so far no success. Does heat not work with Content files in VS2010 projects? Given that I have enormous numbers of files marked as Content Files in numerous projects (over 770 projects), the inability to produce WXS files for these Content Files is huge. I prefer Content files over using the directory to generate the WXS because I already have the files marked as Content files and it's definitely easier given that the source code control system has files and folders all over the directory structure as well.

Note that the Content Files are organized hierarchically within the project, with subfolders (technically filters in VS I suppose). I've started to write a VS2010 macro to generate the WiX fragment from the Content Files, but before I go too far down that route I thought I might ask for assistance.

If anyone would be able to suggest what I am doing wrong, assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.