Wix4: HarvestFile does not generate the registry information when harvesting a 64-bit Managed .NET COM DLL

[kirazy]

• Which version of WiX are you building with?

4.0.0

• Which version of Visual Studio are you building with (if any)?

Visual Studio Professional 2022 17.5.3

• Which version of the WiX Toolset Visual Studio Extension are you building with (if any)?

HeatWave v1

• Which version of .NET are you building with?

.NET Framework 4.8

• If the problem occurs when installing your packages built with WiX, what is the version of Windows the package is running on?

N/A

• Describe the problem and the steps to reproduce it.

Configuration: Release Platform: x64

Using WixToolset.Heat, 4.0.0. Treating warnings as errors.

I am attempting to use HarvestFile on a 64-bit managed .NET DLL to extract the COM registration information:

<PropertyGroup>
    <HarvestFileDirectoryRefId>INSTALLFOLDER</HarvestFileDirectoryRefId>
    <HarvestFileComponentGroupName>Components.Project</HarvestFileComponentGroupName>
</PropertyGroup>

<ItemGroup>
    <HarvestFile Include="..\Project\bin\x64\Release\net48\Project.dll" />
</ItemGroup>

It fails to extract from the DLL with Error 193, which suggests that it's a bitness mismatch. So, I replace the x86 files in the nuget package directory with the x64 files, straight copy and replace, and re-run the build process, no other changes. It works, and correctly gathers the registry information. I'm thinking this is either an undocumented misconfiguration on my part, or a bug.

• Describe the behavior you expected and how it differed from the actual behavior.

I would expect to be able to Harvest the DLL and for it to correctly generate the Class/Registry entries.

[barnson]

Try using dotnet build.