Happy Halloween! Over the years, WiX has had three releases on Halloween: WiX v3.8 RC, WiX v3.9, and WiX v3.10.1. There are no new releases today, but not for lack of trying. Did we used to intentionally target Halloween when releases were close or were those release dates just massive coincidences? Perhaps we'll never know. (Totally intentional. --Ed.)

Issue triage

  • WIP: WiX v5: Default major upgrade behavior and localized error message, from @barnson, demonstrates that when Rob puts me in charge of how long the meeting lasts, I am always up for the challenge. Rob proposed using an attribute on the Package element as the way to suppress the automatic inclusion of default major upgrade behavior. I grumbled about naming, as I am wont to do. But we all know naming is hard, even when you're not trying to make a pun or include other word play in the name. We also debated the issue of "accidentally" including English strings in a package marked for another language. We ended up deciding that we want to fall back to a "default" language -- because we really like the default major upgrade behavior -- but that we should warn it's happening, so that users can supply their own localization.

  • Bind-time variables in WiX v4 aren't documented, from @barnson, points out that some particular documentation that was present in WiX v3 and isn't in WiX v4. The issue is up for grabs, so someone interested in improving the WiX documentation can port the v3 documentation over.

  • Heat.exe not running in Linux build CI, from @UlrichAlt, reports the fairly unsurprising fact that WiX isn't fully functional on Linux. It's been a long-standing request, and WiX v4's move to .NET Core gets us closer, but at the end of the day, Windows Installer is a Windows component -- it's right there in the name! -- and supporting Linux will require some work from Linux-savvy and Linux-interested developers.

  • Feature to allow MsiProperty to have empty value, from @DarrelF, requests that a bundle be able to pass empty values to properties for an MSI package. Today, that's not allowed but it's probably not an intentional restriction, just one of those "but would anyone want to do that?!" scenarios. Or, even more probable, just a cut-and-paste of a line of code that passes false instead of true. Rob volunteered to make it happen.