As we approach WiX v4 Preview Zero and no longer need to design its features, our meetings are heading back to a historical average of an hour. Today, we got a WiX v4 Preview Zero status update from Rob. How confident are we in hitting our May 4th date? Read on to find out.

Issue triage

  • CoreIntegration test host intermittently crashes while calling MsiSetExternalUI, from @rseanhall, reports an inconsistent crash when running tests in the WiX v4 Core repository. As Rob recently brought ICE validation back, crashes when calling MsiSetExternalUI could indicate a problem with the P/Invoke declaration or just general instability when running tests. We took this issue into WiX v4.0 to investigate.

  • Harvested payloads are never assigned a DownloadUrl, from @rseanhall, reports that when building a bundle harvests the payloads of a package (like external cabinets for an .msi package), it doesn't assign download URLs like it should. Rob volunteered to fix this for WiX v4 Preview Zero.

  • Force integrity check, from @benp87, requests that Burn bundles should have the flag set indicating that Windows should enforce that the .exe have a valid Authenticode signature. This would have the advantage of informing the user immediately at launch if their download was corrupted or modified. However, as the flag to turn on this behavior would have to be baked into the Burn engine, we can't do it in WiX; it would require that every bundle, even during development, be signed. Doing it while building the bundle might be possible but would require a more significant change in the bundle build process. We tagged this as requiring a WIP to demonstrate a justification for the work and a design to accomplish it.

  • NetFx extension's .NET Framework package definitions are failing signature verification, from @jozefizso, is the amazingly-difficult-to-believe report that Microsoft replaced the .NET Framework redistributables at their "permanent" download URLs with ones that have been updated with a new -- and incompatible -- digital signature based on the newer SHA-2 algorithm. The result is that a bundle containing one of the affected .NET Framework redistributables will fail during install if the .NET Framework redistributable is needed for the machine. A workaround for installation is to manually install .NET Framework before starting the bundle. However, there is no workaround for existing bundles when running a repair or when creating a layout. We're hopeful that Microsoft will come to their collective senses and restore the original redistributables and not break the URLs. We decided to revisit this issue at our next meeting in two weeks to see if and/or how the situation has changed.

WiX v4 Preview Zero

Will May The Fourth be with us? Rob is less confident than he was at our prior meeting at shipping WiX v4 Preview Zero next week. There are currently six open issues assigned to Preview Zero and Rob explained his current work to reorganize the many WiX v4 microrepos into one monorepo, much like how WiX v3 was arranged.

Rather than reschedule for a new target date, we decided to "slip day-for-day" until planned work is done and we're happy with preview quality. With a bit (lot) of luck, it might even still be 4-May. But if it's not, that's OK too.