Are windows build machines necessary to build MSI installers? is it possible to do it on a linux bui...

# compose-desktop

[spierce7]

Are windows build machines necessary to build MSI installers? is it possible to do it on a linux build machine?

[ephemient]

I believe that is a limitation of jpackage

[spierce7]

ah

[spierce7]

I see

[Michael Paus]

Jpackage uses, e.g., the platform specific https://wixtoolset.org/ on Windows which is simply not available on Linux. Similar limitations exist on macOS.

[Big Chungus]

A wild idea, but has anyone tried to install wix toolset with wine and build msi on linux that way?

[ephemient]

https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=16248 not sure why it's rated "bronze" when

If you use the wine builtin msi.dll, light.exe produces an .msi file that cannot be installed on MS Windows, probably due to missing summary information in this file.

seems to defeat the whole purpose

[ephemient]

still, that's a really old report, so it could be worth a shot

[Big Chungus]

(Note, this msi file does not install on MS Windows, override with a native msi.dll to get an installable msi file)

[Big Chungus]

Seems there's a potential workaround

[mikehearn]

I'm looking for more private beta testers for Conveyor, a tool that can build MSIX packages (MSI is deprecated, MSIX is the replacement) and do so on Linux. MSIX packages also have built in software update, which you'll need at some point. If anyone would like to test, let me know.

[spierce7]

There are other things that are necesary, like wix tools