is it possible to create a multilanguage installer

Question

is it possible to create a multilanguage installer using WIX ?

Answer 1

Absolutely. First, your .msi must have all the transforms from foreign-language MSIs embedded into it (see Embedded Transforms). This can be done with Microsoft's MsiTran.exe and WiSubStg.vbs, mentioned in the GeekTieGuy link elsewhere in this post.

Second, your .wxs file's Package element must contain a Languages attribute with a comma-delimited list of all your supported locale IDs, e.g.

Languages="1033,1031,3082,1036,1040,1041,1042,1043,1046,1049,2052,1028"

Now you can double-click the .msi on a foreign language system and have it automatically come up in the correct language

Answer 2

Apparently there is a solution to your problem using WIX. What you need to do is to create a bootstrap loader. There is a tool called Setupbld.exe that helps with that. You can read more on John Robbins' Blog.

Answer 3

You can do this without bootstrapper, if you create embedded transformations, and MSI installer will automatically apply one of them, according to your system locale.

For complete details & scripts, please, follow this link:

http://www.geektieguy.com/2010/03/13/create-a-multi-lingual-multi-language-msi-using-wix-and-custom-build-scripts/

They say, it is undocumented feature of Microsoft Installer, so please, be careful using it.

Answer 4

It may not be impossible, but it is likely very, very difficult to author an MSI with Wix where the UI language is determined at runtime. Wix is all about build-time localization, ie you can easily create different MSIs, each with its own UI language, from the same source files.