WiX Online Meeting #159 Highlights

Issue triage

• WiX v4 decompile-to-product doesn’t schedule actions, from @barnson, suggests that the WiX v4 decompiler was in error in how it decompiled merge modules. Upon deeper reflection, however, we decided that the combination of decompiling a merge module as if it were a product (functionality in WiX v3’s Melt.exe), the WiX v4 decompiler was actually doing the right thing. Still, kudos for the report, @barnson!

• With the VS2017 extension, removing a project reference deletes the project from disk, from @burtonrodman, suggests that Votive doesn’t like Visual Basic projects and will delete them when removing a reference to them. We agree that’s overkill and opened the issue in WiX v4.x for someone to investigate.

• V4 decompiler doesn’t decompile ARM into Package/@Platform, from @barnson, is another WiX v4 decompiler bug. I bravely volunteered to make the fix.

• Accessibility: Welcome dialog order of controls is incorrect and Accessibility: Order of controls is read incorrectly, both from @SteveL-MSFT, report that dialog control order in the WixUI dialog library is incorrect. We opened the issue in WiX v4.x.

• Accessibility: Screen reader cannot give information about installation progress and Accessibility: Narrator reading graphic controls not useful to the user, both from @SteveL-MSFT, report insufficient and unnecessary extra information (respectively) for screen readers with packages using the WixUI dialog library. Unfortunately, WixUI cannot affect accessibility information except through what Windows Installer offers, so we had to close these issues as “external,” beyond our control.

• WixUI_Advanced: x64 package installed to “C:\Program Files(x86)”, from @alexhass, requests x64 support for WixUI_Advanced. We took this issue into WiX v4.x.

• WixUI_Advanced: String overflow (greater than length permitted in column), from @alexhass, reports an ICE error when using the ja-JP localization for the WixUI dialog library. It appears there was an attempt to use fallback fonts, which MSI UI doesn’t support. We took the issue in WiX v4.x.

• Setting to enforce different REINSTALLMODE flag than “o” for bootstrappers, from @Danielku15, requests the ability to control the REINSTALLMODE property passed to MSI packages in a bundle. REINSTALLMODE gives great power over the repair of a package but with great power comes great responsibility…the properly design the feature. Therefore, this issue got the wip-required label so anyone interested in implementing the feature will need to create a WiX Improvement Proposal so we can discuss how to offer the feature safely in WiX v4.x.

• Conditional inclusion of files (like .wxl), from @thims, requests the ability to have Votive respect conditions on items in a .wixproj project file. We took the issue in WiX v4.x for those brave enough to get into Visual Studio integration code.

• VS 2019 Support, from @chrpai, requests support for the still-warm-from-the-oven Visual Studio 2019 preview. This is in the queue for WiX v4.0.