Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

Changing the file extension of WiX extensions from .dll to .wixext (Revisited)

In one of my last blog posts I wrote about how we would be changing the file extension of WiX extensions from .dll to .wixext. Well, it turns out that we won't be doing it for technical reasons.

A WiX extension is really just a .NET assembly with an embedded XSD and wixlib. While it's technically possible to rename a managed assembly from .dll to .wixext, it will add a limitation that we didn't want to enforce. If WixExtensionA.wixext had a runtime reference to WixExtensionB.wixext, then the runtime cannot find the file if it doesn't end in a .dll. I personally think that's a limitation that the .NET Framework did not need to impose, but I also do not know all of the details. I'm sure there was a good reason to impose that limitation. We also had some problems with Visual Studio not letting us add project references to other WixExtensions that didn't end in a .dll.

As a result, we will not be doing this change and the current behavior will remain.

Published Monday, March 03, 2008 12:27 PM by jrock
Filed under:

Comments

Monday, March 03, 2008 5:39 PM by MSDN Blog Postings » Changing the file extension of WiX extensions from .dll to .wixext (Revisited)

# MSDN Blog Postings » Changing the file extension of WiX extensions from .dll to .wixext (Revisited)

PingBack from http://msdnrss.thecoderblogs.com/2008/03/03/changing-the-file-extension-of-wix-extensions-from-dll-to-wixext-revisited/

Tuesday, March 04, 2008 8:26 AM by DM

# re: Changing the file extension of WiX extensions from .dll to .wixext (Revisited)

Can't you use a double "dot" extension like "*.wixext.dll" ?

DM

Tuesday, March 04, 2008 1:02 PM by jrock

# re: Changing the file extension of WiX extensions from .dll to .wixext (Revisited)

That's a great idea. However, at that point, it's more of a convention than a file extension. The OS just looks at the last part (.dll) and will ignore the .wixext part. We won't get a lot of the benefits that I pointed out in my last blog. Right now we use the convention WixXExtension.dll where X is something like IIs, NetFx, Office, etc. which is essentially what you're proposing.

If I'm missing something, though (which is entirely probable), please point it out!

Thanks for posting.

Monday, March 10, 2008 9:02 AM by DM

# re: Changing the file extension of WiX extensions from .dll to .wixext (Revisited)

Hi Justin,

Your Wix?Extension convention makes extension files look like this:

 WixIIsExtension.dll

 WixNetFxExtention.dll

What I'm proposing is something like:

 IIs.wixext.dll

 NetFx.wixext.dll

If I build myself a collection of extensions they could look like:

 MyDMTools.wixext.dll

 MyOtherTools.wixext.dll

Another example, to search for all Wix Extensions you could use a syntax like this (sorry for my old DOS heritage):

dir ?:\ *.wixext.dll /s

A double dot extension may not be as useful as changing the .dll extension completely but it sure looks a lot more dicoverable to me.

HTH

Friday, March 21, 2008 3:39 AM by Eric

# re: Changing the file extension of WiX extensions from .dll to .wixext (Revisited)

Yup. Then your dialog box filter can be *.wixext.dll

New Comments to this post are disabled
 
Page view tracker