Introduction to Windows Installer XML (WiX) toolset
What is WiX?
WiX is a set of tools and specifications that allow you to easily create Windows Installer database files. The WiX tools model the traditional compile and link model used to create executables from source code. For WiX, source code is written in XML files. These files are validated against a schema, wix.xsd, then processed by a preprocessor, compiler, and linker to create the desired result. WiX has been designed to allow for the easy creation of multiple Windows Installer databases from a small set of source files. You can use WiX both on the command line and in the Visual Studio development environment.