Rob Mensching's Blog - page 15
Let me lead with the punch line. The WiX toolset v3.6 production release is scheduled for Labor Day 2012. That means unless the unexpected happens, we're four weeks out from the final build of WiX toolset v3.6. So let's talk about what we do expect for the next few weeks.
I'm on paternity leave currently. I hadn't visited Microsoft campus for three weeks now (one week left on leave) until tonight. Tonight, I snuck in under the veil of darkness to drop off 13 lbs. of M&Ms. One pound for each year I've been at Microsoft. I realized now would be a good time to reflect over the last couple years since last year everything I was working on was top secret.
I'm borrowing a bit of Cookie Monster's personal anthem to acknowledge a mistake I think I made several years ago. If you've worked with the WiX Toolset for any amount of time, you've undoubtedly caught on to the naming scheme we use for tools.
Today we released WiX v3.6 RC. You may remember that less than two months ago we released "Release Candidate Zero". Well, we are back with fewer bugs than ever before (5) asking for you to download this release and tell us how WiX v3.6 is doing. At this point, the feature are all complete and we expect they just work. So what's left?
A name, or if you prefer identity, is a profoundly important concept in pretty much everything. In software deployment identities serve as the foundation for versioning and dependencies which are pretty much everything for us. In ancient Egyptian mythology, Isis was granted power over the all powerful sun god, Ra, when he told her his true name.
Today we released WiX v3.6 RC0. If you are on the WiX v3.6 Beta or you were waiting for Burn to become fundamentally stable or you are looking for VS 11 support, this is a great time to upgrade. Core scenarios work and we do not expect any further breaking changes. At the same time, we are still fixing most bugs that are filed. That means if you do hit an issue in RC0, there is a good chance we can get the fix in before locking down. Wondering what's left?
My interview with Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell at .NET Rocks went up yesterday. Like all interviews or public speaking gigs, I had some butterflies before the show. But when Carl Skype'd me the world just floated away and I on! The whole interview was tons of fun but there were a couple things that I thought went particularly well.
Since the beginning, or at least as long as I can remember, WiX Toolset builds were released on Fridays. Friday seemed like as good a day as any. It was at the end of the week, so it would have whatever contributions were made that week. Plus everyone looks forward to Fridays. Well, starting this week we're moving the build to Monday.