wix - Looking for a simple way to include all files in a project's BIN folder in my MSI

Question

I have many files (hundreds) in my project's output BIN folder. I simply need to have an installer to include the files in the bin folder in an MSI installer.

In my WIX installer project, I have the following target to use the harvest tool and generate a list of all files in a bin folder, later on, I reference them in my WIX definitions:

  <Target Name="GenerateHeat">
    <HeatDirectory Directory="..MyAppinDebug" 
       PreprocessorVariable="var.HeatPath" OutputFile="HarvestedFiles.wxs"
       ComponentGroupName="HarvestedFiles" DirectoryRefId="FOLDER1" 
       AutogenerateGuids="true" ToolPath="$(WixToolPath)" 
       SuppressFragments="true" SuppressRegistry="true" SuppressRootDirectory="true" />
  </Target>

Is there any way to simply include all files in a bin folder and include them in the MSI without generating the intermediate file list? I prefer to specify the BIN folder name and WIX includes them in a <ComponentGroup>, so I can reference it in my <Product>

Update and clarification

This question is not about how MSI works. This is about how WIX can copy the content of a folder into an MSI without specifying every single file name in a <Component> and <File> sandwich.

Answer 1

FireGiant: I believe the commercial branch of WiX (FireGiant), has a module for this. HeatWave Harvesting - or something like that. It is part of the WiX expansion pack if I am not mistaken. It allows advanced harvesting to create MSI files and perhaps other formats that I am not aware of. I know next to nothing about the module apart from that. Oh, it also supports COM extraction from 64-bit COM files - which is not working in heat.exe at the moment.

Tallow: Back in the days of WiX2 there was a tool called Tallow that was developed by someone whose name I can not recall. It generated WiX markup to install files from a given input folder and even kept component GUIDs in sync (as far as I recall). I saw some copies of it on github.com, but the repository I downloaded had several malware hits, so no link.

Paraffin: A tool I have never used is Paraffin - supposedly a better Tallow - https://github.com/Wintellect/Paraffin. I can't say much about it since I have not tried it. Give it a quick look? I am not sure if it is maintained at all to be honest, but it sure beats rolling your own solution from scratch.