Today's meeting was a little longer than average because, in addition to the usual triage of new issues, we reviewed the remaining issues open for WiX v3.10.
New issue triage
Bug 4745 | Bootstrapper setup crashes when built with VS 2013 Update 4 reports a problem using WiX v3.9 and Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 to build Burn bootstrapper applications. Several people reported using that combination for their own BAs so consensus was that there isn't a global problem but likely an issue exposed by minor changes across Visual Studio and WiX v3.9.
Bug 4746 | Managed custom actions in daily builds says that the documentation Integrating WiX Projects Into Daily Builds doesn't cover what's needed to use the DTF MakeSfxCA.exe tool to build managed-code custom actions. And we concur so we opened the bug for any WiX v3.x release. If you're interested in fixing this bug, take a look at the Markdown source.
Feature 4747 | Settings Engine Expiration Policy For History Should Be Configurable is a feature request for the WiX v4.x settings engine. Mike created it and as he'll likely be the one implementing it, we agreed to open it for WiX v4.x.
Feature 4748 | Allow prerequisites evaluation and install even if MBA can start without them caused some discussion, mostly from me not knowing all the magic involved in the managed bootstrapper application support code that hosts the .NET CLR. My lack of knowledge notwithstanding, Phill reported that the
supportedRuntimeelement could be used to specify a particular version of .NET is required, so a feature to always install MBA prerequisites isn't really needed.
WiX v3.10 issue review
With Microsoft's Build 2015 conference starting Wednesday, we hope to hear very soon about release dates for Visual Studio 2015. As WiX v3.10 is all about Visual Studio 2015, those dates tell us how long we have to finish WiX v3.10. With that in mind, we reviewed the six remaining open issues assigned to WiX v3.10.
Feature 4180 | .NET 4.5.1 & 4.5.2 EULAs is a bug that's been around for more than a year in various states. Currently, the problem we're facing is that .NET 4.5.1 and .NET 4.5.2 don't have licenses that are available online. The pre-req BA that bootstraps .NET for managed-code BAs links the .NET license so without online EULAs, the .NET 4.5.1 and .NET 4.5.2 package groups don't have the "magic variables" that let them be used as pre-reqs for managed BAs. Unfortunately, shipping the licenses would mean adding many payloads (one per language) and require changes in WixStdBA to support switching from an online URL to a local file. Instead, Rob volunteered to write a Web service that would let us host the .NET licenses on wixtoolset.org. Now all I have to do is download every language pack for both .NET 4.5.1 and .NET 4.5.2 and extract the licenses. Try not to be jealous of my glamorous life!
Bug 4629 | pyro0001: object reference not set to an instance of an object is a bug that has a workaround but I'd really hoped to track down the root cause and fix it (ideally) or at least provide a better error message. (Crashing with an unhandled exception is just uncouth.) Unfortunately, my tentative poking around didn't yield enough information to be actionable and given that the bug exists in some of the gnarliest WiX code, we decided it was too late to take a fix even if we had one. We moved the bug to WiX v3.11.
Bug 4734 | Web Documentation Bug on Quiet Execution Custom Action Page is ready with a pull request.
Feature 4720 | Allow tweaking of NetFx package conditions is ready with a pull request.
For Bug 4716 | WixStandardBootstrapperApplication.HyperlinkLicense theme added new localization strings, I implemented a workaround to missing localization strings so a pre-v3.10 theme .wxl file continues to work in v3.10. I should have a pull request out this weekend.
Heath and Jacob played hooky today so I added a reminders to Bug 4432 | Add burn support for only caching packages and Bug 4512 | WiX BA allows multiple clicks of Install button while update check is running.
That's all the bugs currently assigned to WiX v3.10. We'll keep triaging bugs so if any high-priority bugs come in, there might be more work for v3.10. Either way, the next step is to wait for Visual Studio 2015 Release Candidate and see if there are changes we need to handle. Hopefully we'll know more after Build.