[wix-devs] Running WiX on Linux using Mono

[Iain Nicol]

On 9 July, Rob Mensching wrote:
> 1.  FileVersionInfo - this is what I was concerned about with .NET Core. The .NET Standard says "vNext" of Mono will support .NET Core 2.0 (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/net-standard). If that is Mono 5 (just came out) or something reasonably soon, we may be okay. First step, reach out to .NET Core team and ask about that (https://twitter.com/robmen/status/884079880261910528).
> 
> As you note, worst case, we find a way to implement shim. Let's see what sort of answers we get from the .NET Core team.

OK.

I'll also see if I can convince the CoreFX people to throw 
PlatformNotSupportedException on Linux instead of returning dummy 
Version 0.0.0.0.

> 4. Does Mono do something special to redirect Pinvoke MSI.DLL to "libmsi.so"?

It's easy to PInvoke .so's, both on Mono, and on .NET Core.

We /might/ have to change "msi.dll" to just "msi" in the C# declaration. 
  And we probably have to be explicit about the calling convention 
(stdcall) in the Linux C code, and possibly also the C# code.  Then, 
provided the .so is in the right place, everything should work.


> Finally, to be crystal clear, I'm not working on Linux (which is probably more than obvious at this point <smile/>). That means I'll be leaning pretty heavily on you (and Iain if he plans to stay involved)

Yup, I'll stay involved.  But I'm trying to avoid replying much in the 
short term.  That's because you're repeatedly telling us you're on a 
mini well deserved break from WiX until August. :)