Rob Mensching's Blog - page 13

Last week I spent a large amount of time talking about my new adventure. Let's kick off this week talking about the WiX Toolset community. We are at the beginning of another major transition and I don't mean my leaving Microsoft. The WiX toolset needs its 5th generation of core developers. Are you the next core WiX toolset developer?

Halo was an integral part of the early days of the WiX Toolset. We started working at about 6:30 PM on Thursdays, took a break at 11:30 PM to play Halo for an hour or so then maybe there was more coding or maybe it was time to call it a night. It's not like that any more. In fact, I was cleaning out my Inbox this morning and came across this comic that Reid sent a couple years ago.

On New Year's Eve I left Microsoft. This year I begin a new adventure. A couple people asked, "Where are you headed?" I am off to create a new company. A company that focuses on setup, deployment and the WiX toolset. I have a few ideas that I want to share with you since I'm curious what you think.

Badass. Next New Year's Eve this is how I'm opening a bottle of champagne.

Today was my last day at Microsoft. After 13.5 years I decided it was time to strike out on my own. I'm starting a new company that builds on my setup expertise to take the WiX Toolset to the next level. I'll talk more about the future tomorrow. On this New Year's Eve, I want to look back and reflect on my tenure at the largest software company in the world.

Happy Holidays! It is my pleasure to announce that the WiX toolset v3.7 is now officially declared Production/Stable. The final build number is v3.7.1224.0. You can download it from here.

Phil Haack wrote a post about responding to feedback on your Open Source project yesterday. If you run a project you will either benefit by taking his words to heart or you already have (or you are probably very sad <smile/>). Even if you don't run a project, I encourage you to read his blog post then come back here for one follow up item.

The next major version of the WiX Toolset is now a couple weeks underway. WiX Toolset v4.0 is shaping up to be the most exciting version since WiX v2.0 was released as Open Source in 2004. In WiX v4.0 we expand beyond the confines of the Windows Installer and XML. There are a lot of changes ahead of us, the following are highlights of what's in WiX v4.0 right now.