WiX Online Meeting #142 Highlights

Issue triage

• Add option to suppress hard linking, from @NeoAdonis, requests a switch to prevent WiX from using hard links to files rather than copying them. WiX uses hard links to improve build-time performance, as creating a hard link is what we call “very very fast,” regardless of the size of the file. But hard links have some downsides, because modifications to any of the “copies” of the files also modify the “original” files. We think that WiX v4 can be smarter about when to use hard linking and when to use copying, so we took the issue there for further study.

• Windows Installer XML and Project Reference are missing, from @NateInMaine, points out that the latest WiX Toolset Visual Studio Extension (formerly known as Votive) puts its templates in directories with names other than documented. We agree and opened the issue to fix the documentation to match reality. (Fixing reality is usually more difficult.)

• Enable relative path with double dot in File/@Source attribute, from @daliboris, reported a problem using relative paths inside a File/@Source attribute but given that that’s something many of us do on a daily basis, we had to resolve this one norepro.

• lit.exe fails when -bf is set but works when it is not, from @psycorp, reports different behavior when creating .wixlibs based on whether the .wixlib has files bound into it. Seems like a simple bug that might already be fixed in WiX v4.

• [Documentation] how to validate/test MSI - CI pipeline, from @juju4, requests documentation on testing packages. While that might be a book on its own, we opened the request for anyone who wants to contribute useful information on the topic.

• Please add CSIDL_COMMON_PROGRAMS to Burn, from @nick2893, requests a new built-in Burn variable. A reasonable request, which we opened in WiX v4.x.

• Discrepancy between WixVariable documentation and behavior, from @avivanoff, points out that the WixVariable element documentation says that you can’t use an empty string for the variable’s value but the compiler lets you do just that. So who’s right? See the previous commentary about fixing documentation being easier than fixing reality. Also, sometimes the documentation is just plain wrong, like in this instance.

• Create the setup exe with control guard feature (CFG) flag, from @meijin007, requests that Burn be built with Control Flow Guard, a compiler and OS security feature. Hey, we love security, so we took this issue into WiX v4.x.

Potential Burn bug discussion

Jacob requested some real-time discussion of a potential Burn bug that he brought up on the wix-devs mailing list. It proved fruitful, as we came up with a plan and people volunteered/were volunteered. Expect more on wix-devs.