WiX Heat Website Problems

Some developers love to hate InstallShield. I've met a few who felt strongly on this topic. Let me be blunt: Frankly they didn't have a technical bone to stand on. They just seemed to fixate on a couple minor little annoyances or otherwise make a big deal out of a non-issue because of their lack of understanding of the underlying technology. One thing that was always in common was a `my grass is greener` attitude when they would reccomend some other tool or worse try to invent one themselves.

Eitherway, I try to keep my options and opinions as open as possible so occasionally I'll evaluate other tools. Recently I look at WiX to see how it's going.

Derek Cicerone once wrote in his blog:

"Heat has the capability, today, to capture IIS web sites. Simply run 'heat.exe
website "My WebSite Name" -out sourceFile.wxs' to harvest a web site and all its
files. You can then compile and link with the WixIIsExtension to create an
entire web site setup in minutes! "

Wow, such glowing optimistic comments. Ok, so let's give it a try: ( Website name changed to product the innocent )

C:\data> heat website MyWebSite -out sourceFile.wxs

Microsoft (R) Windows Installer XML Toolset Harvester version
3.0.2211.0Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 2006. All rights
reserved.
heat.exe : error HEAT0001 : Exception from HRESULT:
0x80005006.
Exception Type:
System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException
Stack Trace: at
System.DirectoryServices.Interop.IAds.GetEx(String bstrName) at
System.DirectoryServices.PropertyValueCollection.PopulateList() at
System.DirectoryServices.PropertyValueCollection..ctor(DirectoryEntry entry,
String propertyName) at
System.DirectoryServices.PropertyCollection.get_Item(String
propertyName) at
Microsoft.Tools.WindowsInstallerXml.Extensions.IIsWebSiteHarvester.HarvestWebSite(DirectoryEntry
webSiteEntry) at
Microsoft.Tools.WindowsInstallerXml.Extensions.IIsWebSiteHarvester.HarvestWebSite(String
name) at
Microsoft.Tools.WindowsInstallerXml.Extensions.IIsWebSiteHarvester.Harvest(String
argument) at
Microsoft.Tools.WindowsInstallerXml.Harvester.Harvest(String
argument) at
Microsoft.Tools.WindowsInstallerXml.Tools.Heat.Run(String[] args)

Hmmmm, ok maybe I'm passing the website name wrong. Lets's see what it does with a site that I know doesn't exist:

C:\data> heat website foo -out sourceFile.wxs

Microsoft (R) Windows Installer XML Toolset Harvester version
3.0.2211.0Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 2006. All rights
reserved.
heat.exe : error HEAT5158 : The web site 'foo' could not be
found. Please check that the web site exists, and that it is spelled
correctly (please note, you must use the correct case).

Ok, that's different. So obviously the first time it did find my website. So what happens if you don't pass a web site name? Let's see......

Microsoft (R) Windows Installer XML Toolset Harvester version
3.0.2211.0Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 2006. All rights
reserved.
heat.exe : error HEAT0001 : Value cannot be null.Parameter name:
argument
Exception Type: System.ArgumentNullException
Stack
Trace: at
Microsoft.Tools.WindowsInstallerXml.Harvester.Harvest(String
argument) at
Microsoft.Tools.WindowsInstallerXml.Tools.Heat.Run(String[] args)

Wow, that's pretty. Don't even bother trying to catch the error and give the user something useful to work with. Just throw an exception and blog chunks. And the InstallShield haters say the quality of InstallShield is bad.