[wix-devs] VS2017 extension - fix for issue 5597 creates more problems

[Ivan Peev]

Hi Team,

We have recently determined installations created with WiX 3.14 beta are no
longer able to properly discover (VS2017DEVENV) VS 2017 installations with
SKU: Microsoft.VisualStudio.Product.SQL

The above is perfectly valid SKU for a Microsoft tool named "SQL Server
Data Tools". It uses VS as development and design environment. After
further analysis we have determined the problem was caused by the fix made
for issue 5597. I understand this fix was made to closely match a similar
type of approach already used in vswhere tool. However, this doesn't
necessarily mean vswhere implementation is correct either. I'm not too
familiar with the BuildTools installation problem and why it necessitates
such a fix, but at this point I believe the fix made is more harmful than
the issue it tries to address.

I would like to ask the team to either completely remove the check made in
InstanceInProducts function or if there is a valid reason for such check to
exist, to make it more relaxed. Meaning instead of checking for specific
SKUs, to instead check if the SKU starts with:
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Product

In this way a valid SKU like the one listed above will be properly
detected. Looking forward to your feedback.

Regards,
Ivan