As someone who dabbles in Windows desktop development, I still don't know the best way to even make an MSI. Some of the tools from Microsoft are usable but they all seem to be obsolete.
Unfortunately it requires you to write (or copy from somewhere) literally thousands of lines of incomprehensible XML. You have to learn all the details of both MSI and the various novel sublanguages embedded in the WiX XML.
But fortunately you can generate all the XML from just a few lines of nice and clean C# using WiX#, which adds a user-friendly API on top of WiX and lets you forget about XML and databases entirely: https://github.com/oleg-shilo/wixsharp
To be fair, though, an MSI to install a 10 files in "C:\Program Files\AppName", register a couple .NET assemblies, create a couple of shortcuts, and throw a few values into the registry would amount to <100 lines of XML.
Here's a years-old WiX 2.0 syntax source file to install 4 files in "C:\Program Files\appname" and run an EXE embedded in the MSI to install a service: https://github.com/EvanAnderson/ts_block/blob/master/MSI/ts_...
I've only seen "thousands of lines" of WiX source when dealing programs that install a ton of files, or put scads of entries in the registry.
Most of the MSIs with WiX are based on a simple skeleton generated from a template, and using "includes" generated by the "candle" tool.
Understanding the Windows Installer and the WiX source feels analogous to what I see in "modern" web development-- a bunch of tools that developers use, seemingly without understanding what they do, to create a massive pile of edifice into which original code is finally placed.
[0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/msix/overview
[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/api/windows.management....
"You can run your desktop application installers through this tool and obtain an MSIX package that you can install on your machine or upload to the Microsoft Store. "
Gross.