WiX installer for XNA 4.0 game?

Question

I'm trying to make a quick installer for my XNA 4.0 game which should be able to install silently. I did some research and figured out that WiX would probably be best for me. I don't like the setup projects inbuilt in Visual Studio 2010, and InstallShield LE doesn't have an XNA 4.0 redistributable.

So, where can I find resources on how to make a WiX installer for an XNA 4.0 game?

I've tried these links, but with no luck. They are targeting a different XNA version, and I want to make sure that a silent install would be supported (while still installing all prerequisites).

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2008/11/17/9115792.aspx

http://xnainstaller.codeplex.com/

Answer 1

According to the XNA Installer website:

The presence of the DirectX 9.0c runtime files needed by XNA 4.0 is checked as well as the XNA Framework 4.0 itself. If any of those two don't exist in the target system, the installer will, depending on its configuration, either require the user to install them or automatically install them.

In fact,

The installer's overhead can be as little as 460 KB (without XNA Framework integrated) or 6.0 MB (including the XNA Framework 4.0) - less than the XNA Framework 4.0 redistributable alone - due to some clever compression tricks.

It looks to me like it will support your XNA 4.0 needs, albeit the project is built for SharpDeveloper, not VS2010. As robust as it is, the XNA Installer source code will be your best resource for achieving your goal. To answer your question, your best bet would be to check the WiX Documentation, and the tutorial linked from it. Alas, I can't post more than 2 hyperlinks. Have a look at the following resources (if you're new to WiX), and customize the XNA Installer source code (which is very well commented, by the way) however you need:

A great bottom-up tutorial describing more robust WiX installer creation.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/471424/wix-tricks-and-tips

You'll be able to customize for use in VS2010 by changing a few variables and paths dependent on your personal setup, e.g. <WixToolPath>, <WixTargetsPath> and <WixTasksPath> on lines 9-11 of MyGame.wixproj. You could alternatively just build the .wixproj from the VS command prompt using msbuild after you customize to your liking. Hope this helps!