WiX Online Meeting #122 Highlights

Issue triage

• Building WiX projects that generate messages may deadlock in VSTS vNext builds, from @dwhearn, got a response after last meeting but we’re still looking for details, as WiX itself is built on VSTS and doesn’t experience the reported problems.

• Add search capability inside XML file, from @fyodorkor, is the issue side of a WIP to add XML search capability to WiX. We happily took the issue into WiX v4.x.

• Burn: Download previous package versions that are missing from the cache, from @icedtoast, identified a problem we’ve seen more of lately: Registry cleaners that actively cause damage to the system by deleting packages from the MSI package cache. Rob wasn’t a fan of the suggested design so I opened another issue to leave it up to the WIP writer.

• Burn installer launched by standard user cannot perform system restart even elevated at Apply, from @octomata, says that even if an admin approves the install, the bootstrapper application cannot reboot if one’s required at the end of the install. We took this issue into WiX v4.x for investigation.

• Melt a Product, corrected wixpdb does not update paths., from @chadmiles, reports a problem when building patches using Melt to update .wixpdb files. We’re looking for reasons why Pyro cares about the changed paths so we’ll keep the issue open until we know for sure.

• Spelling error in msiengine.cpp: “Failed to run maintanance mode”, from @tjl10, reports a typo in a debug message. I’m sure it wasn’t me but we took it into WiX v4.x anyway.

WiX v3.11 status

We’re at four open issues and a similar number of pull requests we’re still looking at for WiX v3.11. So far, our plan to ship a release candidate of both WiX v3.11 and Votive on 7-March when Visual Studio 2017 is released is still on, assuming your hard-working WiX volunteers keep their noses down.