WiX Online Meeting #124 Highlights

WiX v3.11

As we discuss below, there’s one bug remaining we strongly want to fix in WiX v3.11 so RC2 is not the final build. We hope that one bug is the only bug but we’re not on track to ship on April Fools’ Day. Instead, we’re looking at dates in early May. Turns out there are plenty of holidays we use to keep up the tradition of shipping WiX releases on holidays. Stay tuned.

Issue triage

• Building WiX projects that generate messages may deadlock in VSTS vNext builds, from @dwhearn, came back this week with details that might help diagnose and fix the bug. We took it into for v4.0 for someone to investigate a fix.

• Running /layout shows Unexpected action state in UI, from @barnson, shows a loving attention to user experience and equally loving attention to providing a fix. We retroactively took this fix in WiX v3.11.

• Sign the vsix packages, from @andorz, requests that Visual Studio Extensions be Authenticode-signed. We all agree that’s a good idea but issues on the backend will probably prevent this from happening in WiX v3.11 so we took the issue for WiX v3.14.

• Project reference variable TargetPath contains multiple items for v141 C++ projects, from @tsoftware, demonstrates one of the many problems the new, isolated nature of MSBuild v15 is causing us. (Not that we’re bitter.) We took a fix in WiX v3.11.

• C++ Custom Action project template and SDK files missing, from @eteeuw-groeneveld, is a known, thorny issue with the C++ custom action project templates. This is planned for WiX v3.11.

• Project reference variable TargetDir is missing trailing backslash for C++ projects, from @eteeuw-groeneveld, is yet another breaking change introduced by MSBuild v15. (We’re starting to take it personally.) We took a fix in WiX v3.11.

• WiX v3.11.0.1507 doesn’t include VS2017 SDK, from @barnson, points out that the native SDK for Visual Studio 2017 isn’t included in the WiX v3.11. That’s a part of the VS2017 support that was waiting for the ability to detect an instance of VS2017. Instead, the fix and its sister from another mister always installs the SDKs.

• Add hooks in Burn for a WiX extension to execute searches at runtime, from @rseanhall, is a placeholder for a future WIP to design an extensibility model for Burn outside the existing bootstrapper application support. We took this in WiX v4.x.

• Virus Warning with Wix SDK, from @delta1186, reports that a file in the WiX SDK is generating false positives for a virus. We’re familiar with extra-aggressive anti-virus programs complaining about the WiX bundle but this the first time we’ve seen reports for an individual file. We’re going to monitor this with the WiX v3.11 RC2 build.

• Add Copyright (WixBundleCopyright) built-in variable for bundle, from @kovalikp, requests another bundle attribute to be reflected in a bundle variable. Nobody in the meeting was enthused with that idea, and Jacob pointed out that you can easily author a bundle Variable with an identical string if necessary. Sounds good to me.

• SqlExtension Incompatible with TLS 1.2, from @ArthurWelch, points out that OLEDB, the API that the WiX SQL custom actions rely on, is no longer being updated with new providers as part of SQL Server. Unfortunately, a substantial rewrite is required to move to ODBC, the “new” preferred SQL API for native code, or to use managed code. That’s a problem for WiX v4.x.

• POWERSHELLVERSION wix property in WixPSExtension.dll extension cannot detect powershell version 5.0 because it is looking into the wrong registry path, from @hkyupelyan, is a request to support new versions of PowerShell. We took this issue into WiX v4.x.

• WiX Burn leaves del*.tmp in temp directory, from @leshy84, reports a problem with leftover files not getting cleaned up. We took this issue into WiX v4.0 with the reporter providing a fix there.