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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-14T15:18:00+00:00

I’m currently integrating my Wix projects in MSBuild. It is necessary for me to

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I’m currently integrating my Wix projects in MSBuild. It is necessary for me to pass multiple values to the Wix project. One value will work (ProductVersion in the sample below).

<Target Name="BuildWixSetups">
    <MSBuild Condition="'%(WixSetups.Identity)'!=''"
                Projects="%(WixSetups.Identity)"
                Targets="Rebuild" Properties="Configuration=Release;OutputPath=$(OutDir);DefineConstants=ProductVersion=%(WixSetups.ISVersion)" ContinueOnError="true"/>
</Target>

However, how do I pass multiple values to the DefineConstants key? I’ve tried all the ‘logical’ separators (space, comma, semi-colon, pipe-symbol), but this doesn’t work.

Has someone else come across this problem?

Solutions that don’t work:

  1. Trying to add a DefineConstants element does not work because DefineConstants needs to be expressed within the Properties attribute.
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The problem:

    The MSBuild task (not MSBuild.exe, the MSBuild task named MSBuild) cannot handle multiple constants used by WIX projects. Normally you would specify the properties in your build script like:

    <MSBuild Projects="YourSolution.sln" Properties="Configuration=MyConfig;Platform=x86;DefineConstants=&quot;SOMETHING=1;SOMETHINGELSE=2&quot;" />

    What you see however, when looking at the build logs is the MSBuild separates the constants and does not keep the values grouped together like you would expect – similar to:

    Task "MSBuild" Global Properties:
Configuration=MyConfig
Platform=x86
DefineConstants="SOMETHING=1
SOMETHINGELSE=2"

    So when candle tries to use those constants it typically responds with “error CNDL0150: Undefined preprocessor variable ‘$(var.SOMETHINGELSE)’. What this means is the MSBuild task is not properly handling properties which contain multiple ‘=’ in the value even when grouped within quotation marks. Without the property value being grouped in quotation marks, they should obviously be treated as separate properties, rather than a single value.

    The workaround:

    In order to fix this problem, you need to call MSBuild.exe directly and pass those values to it manually.

    msbuild.exe /p:Configuration=MyConfig /p:Platform=x86 /p:DefineConstants="SOMETHING=1;SOMETHINGELSE=2" YourSolution.sln

    This will get your constants the work the way you want them to, without having to redesign your WiX installation project.

    NOTE: If you’re only using a single constant you can still use the MSBuild task like so:

    <MSBuild Projects="YourSolution.sln" Properties="Configuration=MyConfig;Platform=x86;DefineConstants=&quot;SOMETHING=1&quot;" />
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