WiX Online Meeting #150 Highlights

Issue triage

• Light fails with error about not finding a directory, from @kskalski, came back with more information and appears to point to a problem when the Windows Subsystem for Linux is installed on Windows 10. Jacob volunteered to try to reproduce it.

• [Screen Reader - LAPS-Domain Controller - Home Screen] Focus moves to hidden object and narrator reads the inappropriate information on welcome window, [Screen Reader - LAPS-Domain Controller - End User License Agreement] Narrator reads ‘Blank’ when focus moves to license agreement section in Scan mode, [Keyboard Navigation - LAPS -Domain Controller- Home Screen] NVDA focus order should be logical on ‘change, repair and remove installation’ screen on scan mode, and [Visual Requirements - LAPS-Domain Controller - Home Screen] Text is not visible on ‘Welcome screen’ in high contrast Black mode, all from @sonimishra, report various accessibility problems, possibly with the WixUI dialog library. Unfortunately, the reports assume we have access to the reporter’s installer and without the detail we requested, we can’t really do more.

• WiX v4: System.NullReferenceException, from @DevMichaelSabo, reports a crash in WiX v4. Rob volunteered to investigate, with the major refactoring that’s happening in the new WiX v4 micro-repos.

• WiX FileSearch MinVersion broken for system folder on Windows 10, from @nanoant, reports another instance of Windows 10’s decision to “version lie” and not report the current version numbers of system files. Given that Windows guidance is to not use version numbers to make decision about functionality, it’s unlikely the behavior’s going to change. Luckily, Burn does the right thing and makes the real version numbers available.

• lit.exe fails to process localization variables in SourceFile attributes, from @cschut, uncovers a difference in how Lit.exe and Light.exe handle .wxl localization files. Lit bundles the .wxl files you give it, so the resulting .wixlib can contain any number of .wxl files that will be candidates for resolving loc strings when Light.exe runs. That does mean that when building a binary .wixlib — one with all the files bound inside it — that you cannot use loc strings to specify the source a file in the .wixlib. Lit doesn’t process the .wxl files so it won’t know what the values are.

• Preprocessor variables crashes Visual Studio 2015, from @hofmand, reports a problem in Votive when entering a preprocessor variable whose value includes other preprocessor variables. This is a known problem area in Votive but works well when hand-editing the .wixproj file.

• Elevated Bundle /Layout Generates Files without User Permissions, from @andrewderryfarrell, reports a regression from the semi-recent security fix in WiX v3.11.1. There’s a simple workaround so there wasn’t clear consensus about whether this bug is something that needs a fix sooner than WiX v4.0. In the end, we decided if someone did the work to bring a fix from WiX v4.0 to v3.14, it’s serious that we’d take it.

• XmlConfig documentation for ElementId should include PreserveModifiedDate in list of attributes to omit, from @gpgrd01, suggested a doc update and while we’d love it if doc bugs were accompanied by a doc-bug-fixing pull request, but reports are great too.