What does the WiX 3.11 heat -configuration switch do?

Question

When you run the WiX heat tool with no command-line switches, it says it supports the -configuration switch:

Options:
   -ag      autogenerate component guids at compile time
   -cg <ComponentGroupName>  component group name (cannot contain spaces e.g -cg MyComponentGroup)
   -configuration  configuration to set when harvesting the project
   . . . 

My question is: what does the -configuration switch actually do? Google couldn't tell me anything more about it.

Answer 1

The configuration switch allows you to set the build configuration as defined in the project file (usually Release and Debug, but you can define custom configurations). Any conditional properties and items in the project that are keyed to the build configuration will be considered for harvesting.