There's nothing quite like shipping some long-awaited software...except maybe immediately continuing the work to ship the next release. WiX v4 Preview Zero is now available!
Issue triage
NetFx extension's .NET Framework package definitions are failing signature verification, from @jozefizso, Bring back option to verify payload by Authenticode signature, from @rseanhall, and NetFx
PackageGroups should useWixVariables forDownloadUrls, from @barnson have combined and morphed into some kind of megaissue about Microsoft apparently deciding to embrace the idea of constant updates to the redistributables they offer for download at static URLs. We're going to proceed under the assumption we just need to deal with it and come up with a solution, or, more likely, solutions. We'll discuss this issue in detail at the next meeting.Non-permanent ExePackages should require DetectCondition and ExePackage should be consistent about being uninstallable and repairable, both from @rseanhall, are about cleaning up how
ExePackageauthoring and execution are handled, given thatExePackages are black boxes to Burn. The goal is to treat them as closely as possible to other package types, with the requirement that the authoring has to provide the information that Burn needs and can get from the OS for other packages like MSI packages. Both were taken in WiX v4.0.Final .nupkgs contain duplicate native binaries and Ensure .pdbs are only found in symbol .nupkgs, both from @robmen, are bugs introduced in the transition from the WiX v4 microrepos to the new monorepo. As Rob was the architect of that transition, he volunteered to fix his own bugs.
WiX v4-preview.0 Status
The subset of WiX v4 that we planned to release as Preview Zero was released on 17-May as (eventually) planned. To summarize:
- Preview Zero is a command-line-only release, providing
wix.exeas a .NET tool available for installation from NuGet.org. - The most popular WiX extensions -- Util, UI, NetFx, and Bal -- were also published to NuGet.org.
- MSI packages, merge modules, and bundles are supported.
- The
wix convertcommand converts WiX v3 authoring to v4. - MSBuild and patches aren't supported in Preview Zero.
So far, there's been a bit of download activity but not much in the way of reports, good or bad. Optimism says it means that everything that's supposed to work is working. As this is a preview and definitely not a "go-live" release ready for production, we're hoping for a bit of feedback about the conversion process and use of wix.exe as a .NET tool.
WiX v4-preview.1 Agenda
Work continues apace on the work we know we have in the queue to get WiX v4 to a feature-complete state:
- Documentation
- MSBuild support
- Patching support
We also have issues -- bugs and feature requests -- that over time were assigned to both the WiX v4 milestones that we need to triage. So that's the plan for the next several (or more?) meetings: We'll triage the open v4 issues to determine which we think are still important to get into WiX v4.0, which can come later, and which we think are unlikely to get the team's less-than-copious free time -- and ways we can use labels and documentation and even blog posts to better communicate about them.