WiX

Drive to a WiX v2 toolset final release.

Tonight the core WiX toolset virtual team made a concerted effort to reduce the number of open WiX v2 bugs.

At the time of this writing we have 8 bugs. I hope to kill off one more and Bob is looking at another. That would leave us with 6 CustomAction bugs that need to be solved. Then I’ll feel pretty comfortable calling WiX v2 done.

The CustomActions have always been more work to implement, debug and fix. It isn’t just that they are written in C++ (the rest of the WiX toolset is written in C#) but the problems being solved in the CustomActions are harder. Creating actions that participate properly in a compensating transaction takes a lot of effort. The effort that pays off once we get it right because no one ever has to write it again. Developers can write a couple lines of declarative statements and have a transacted installation process.

Anyway, that’s just a quick update on what’s going on tonight. Also, power is back on at home so I’ll be sleeping in my own bed tonight… and it’ll be warm. Keep coding, I’m going to kill off this bug and call it a night.