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

[Heath Stewart]

The vswhere.exe implementation is correct in that it’s original requires were to target VS (hence the name). SQL is not technically a VS SKU, though it is built on the VS shell. They are their own AppID – basically a context that defines what features are available, including extensibility (example: the old Express SKUs were also built on the VS shell but had different AppIDs and didn’t support extensions, nor does IsoShell by default).



Anyone can update the list of product IDs in the VS extension code, but I should warn there’s been a number of problems we, the VS team, have investigated with SSMS (i.e. the “SQL SKU”) where extensions don’t always work because of some bugs in older SSMS. This means that changing the default for the VS extensions may not be good for the end users, but perhaps as an opt-in feature of being able to list which product IDs to target.





________________________________
From: wix-devs <wix-devs-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> on behalf of Rob Mensching via wix-devs <wix-devs at lists.wixtoolset.org>
Sent: Monday, June 17, 2019 10:01:19 AM
To: Heath Stewart
Cc: Rob Mensching; WiX Toolset Developer Mailing List
Subject: Re: [wix-devs] VS2017 extension - fix for issue 5597 creates more problems

Explicitly adding Heath as he owns vswhere.exe as well as this code in the WiX Toolset.

-----Original Message-----
From: wix-devs <wix-devs-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> On Behalf Of Ivan Peev via wix-devs
Sent: Monday, June 17, 2019 9:58 AM
To: wix-devs at lists.wixtoolset.org
Cc: Ivan Peev <ivan.peev at gmail.com>
Subject: [wix-devs] VS2017 extension - fix for issue 5597 creates more problems

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

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