Starting with WiX 3.6 it is possible to create a boostrapper to install other requirements besides you main application.

The WiX application for this is called Burn, which is being shipped with two GUI design. For MP2 the user should be able to customize the installatioon in almost every possible way, which means to allow the modification of more than only one installation directory.

To achieve this, we need to create our own custom managed bootstrapper application (custom MBA).

Debugging a Custom MBA

Overview

Instructions and recommendations for debugging a custom Managed Bootstrapper Application.

Details

For testing developing, testing and debugging of the bootstrapper is might be useful no to carry a big msi-installation file. In the MP2-Setup I created another project: MP2Test. It contains the same structure like the full MP2 setup, but most of the files which are being installed are removed from that package. Here you can see the difference:

There is also a new configuration "Test", which is based on the debug configuration:

The msi package, which is being used is depends on the configuration.

You can use Visual Studio to debug the installer. First you need to compile in debug (or here in test) configuration, then you can manually start the installer:

I added a MessageBox when the Bootstrapper is being loaded to be able to attach the VisualStudio to the process, right from the beginning. see also: How to: Attach to a Running Process