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WiX, Live Mesh and more.

Celebrating 10 years at Microsoft.

Today, this very day, 10 years ago, before the new millennium, I joined Microsoft as a full time employee. I can remember sitting in NEO (New Employee Orientation) on my first day listening to instructions on what forms to sign where and later experienced employees spoke about tips on how to be successful at Microsoft. I don't remember the specifics of what was said. I just remember being so excited to get started writing code. For real.

Ten years seems like a long time, especially in the computer industry. Microsoft recognizes the time with an award (displayed to the right) which is presented by your manager at a convenient team meeting sometime near the month of the anniversary. Honestly, I was a bit surprised when the incredibly heavy box was handed over. Had it already been 10 years?

Some people ask, "Did you ever imagine you'd spend 10 years at Microsoft?" Others are more critical, "How could you work at one company for 10 years?" To be honest, it doesn't feel like 10 years at one company. Instead, it feels more like about 3.5 years at Microsoft Office then 2 years in Microsoft Windows Server then 2 years in Microsoft Windows Core then 2 years at Microsoft Store/Windows Marketplace and now a little over a half a year working on Microsoft Live Mesh. Sure all those groups start with the name "Microsoft" but each of them have a unique culture and purpose. It's like working at 5 different companies without needing to migrate my 401K.

Nonetheless, it has been 10 years at Microsoft so it seems like some celebration is in order. To celebrate, I will be hosting 10 pounds of M&Ms outside my office door. Bringing one pound of M&Ms for each year of your anniversary is a tradition that I learned when I started in Office. As I moved across the company, I found that not all teams shared the tradition but I always observe the ritual. So, if your on Microsoft campus in the next couple days then swing by my office and grab a cup full of M&Ms. To recognize the decade, I'm mixing in a pound of Reese's Pieces just for grins.

Trust me the sugar'll help your coding... or something like that. <smile/>

WiX toolset bug count after June 19th, 2009.

Remember last time when I mentioned that if you didn't hear me talking about WiX v3.0 that would be a good thing? Well, all is not lost but we did take a bug fix tonight so I would appreciate it if everyone would download the latest WiX v3.0 build (with today's date or newer) and make sure all is well for you. The fix is small and very targeted so I'm not expecting problems.

The bug fixes was SFBUG:280526. It was found while Heath was investigating another bug related to language transforms. The issue boils down to bogus logic skipping the validation flags that determine how/when a transform applies. This means that if you use the WiX toolset to build language transforms or patches (which contain embedded transforms) then you need to pick up this drop to make sure everything works correctly.

We've been punting a lot of bugs to WiX v3.5 when there is some sort of work around. This bug, unfortunately, had no work around. Hopefully this is the last bug we take for WiX v3.0 and we will still ship on July 4th.

Below is the pie chart representing our bug count. Yes, it's zero again.

WiX toolset bug count after May 28th, 2009.

Below you will see an empty box. That is not a mistake. Robert suggested I have a picture of a blue pill there: You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.

Well, the story isn't quite over but we do have zero bugs filed against the WiX toolset for v3.0 now. As noted in previous weeks, we were working towards a lockdown date of the 28th that would punt all bugs that did not block key scenarios to WiX v3.5 or 4.0. Last night was Votive's last night for bugs and the remaining Visual Studio 2005 specific issues were all punted.

Now the Visual Studio test team has offered to do a full test pass over all the key scenarios to help ensure that we haven't regressed anything in the last few weeks. We'll let the whole toolset bake for the month of June. Assuming we don't find anything that causes us to modify any code then we release the final build of WiX v3.0 on July 4th.

So if you don't hear me talking about WiX v3.0 over the next few months that means all is well. What am I going to talk about instead? Not much. I'm busy writing code for WiX v3.5 and I'll talk more about that when it does something useful (right now it's just a bunch of code).

In the meantime, keep coding. You know I am.

You can follow the WiX toolset on Twitter.

I created the @wixtoolset Twitter account late last year. The account sat mostly dormant until two weeks ago when I started experimenting with posting to Twitter (tweeting?)from the command-line. After a couple tests, I integrated the experiment into the WiX toolset build process so every build makes a status update to the account. You can see an example here.

Peter noticed the changes while he was in South Korea and asked what was up with Twitter. Joe, who graciously monitors our weekly build process came back with an amusing answer:

Something Rob setup, I think. The obvious, but trivial, answer is to “tweet”. :)

I’m not a twitterer so I don’t know what we’ve been saying. But, from a clandestine look, we’ve only been sending build notifications on it ... the account itself is tracking Rob like a bloodhound and Bob like a lazy guy watching a dude in an airport terminal go about his business. Which is to say, Bob had something like 2 comments in the last week or so, Rob had a dozen. :)

The truth is I'm just experimenting with additional ways to get the news out about new WiX toolset builds. The more people that install the latest builds the better the toolset becomes. So, subscribe to the WiX toolset feed or follow the @wixtoolset Twitter account whichever works best for you. But please do upgrade regularly to help us improve the WiX toolset.