[wix-devs] Linux changes

[Rob Mensching]

Oooh, this sounds like an interesting experiment. If it doesn't make the projects way more cluttered and helps the development experience, that could be nice. I've seen similar annoyances.

As for building *on* Linux, I really just don't want to have to maintain more build permutations than we absolutely need to. I still have a bit of PTSD supporting a gazillion different VS versions to keep stupid Votive and all the .libs working. Our projects were really complicated, the build machine was (is!!!) really complicated, etc. I'm *really hoping* we can get any Linux binaries (hopefully only wixnative.exe) built using the (relatively) new VS support for cross-compiling for Linux.


-----Original Message-----
From: wix-devs <wix-devs-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> On Behalf Of Sean Hall via wix-devs
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2020 2:22 PM
To: WiX Toolset Developer Mailing List <wix-devs at lists.wixtoolset.org>
Cc: Sean Hall <r.sean.hall at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [wix-devs] Linux changes

I don't know about you, but I don't like the development experience in VS when there are multiple target frameworks. "Find all references" is something I do often, and there's a lot of noise when it shows me the results for all three frameworks. I've been tempted to change the project files for Debug to only target netstandard (or netcoreapp). Can we make it so the default only targets .NET Core, and the build script passes in a property to cause it to target all of them?

On Wed, Jul 22, 2020 at 10:16 AM Rob Mensching <rob at firegiant.com> wrote:

> > The people writing the Linux code will not want to develop WiX on
> Windows.
>
> Let's find that balance. I really don't want to maintain the build of 
> WiX on Linux. If we need to do small changes to enable development on 
> Linux, we can work through those. However, I'm hoping those can be 
> isolated to Core.Native.
>
> > but what happens when a new VS version comes out (VS 2021?). For
> example, are we going to support VS2017+ libs even if VS vNext doesn't 
> support building them?
>
> I don't know. It wasn't until very recently that we could target all 
> supported targets from a single build. We'll have to re-evaluate when 
> that changes.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wix-devs <wix-devs-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> On Behalf Of 
> Sean Hall via wix-devs
> Sent: Friday, July 17, 2020 4:32 PM
> To: WiX Toolset Developer Mailing List <wix-devs at lists.wixtoolset.org>
> Cc: Sean Hall <r.sean.hall at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [wix-devs] Linux changes
>
> > I'd be interested to understand where that doesn't work.
>
> The people writing the Linux code will not want to develop WiX on Windows.
>
> > I think that says we'll only support a recent version of VS2019 to 
> > build
> the WiX Toolset.
>
> My question wasn't really about where we're setting our baseline, but 
> what happens when a new VS version comes out (VS 2021?). For example, 
> are we going to support VS2017+ libs even if VS vNext doesn't support 
> building them?
>
> On Sat, Jul 18, 2020 at 9:12 AM Rob Mensching <rob at firegiant.com> wrote:
>
> > I saw those too.
> >
> > >  dotnet.exe does not support '/' for switches, even on Windows.
> > > Maybe we
> > should remove support for it as well?
> >
> > I had the same thought. I think that says, yes. :) I am planning to 
> > work on the command-line changes next (after I get the UI.wixext
> > happy) so I'll handle that.
> >
> >
> > > Are the OS conditioned changes that I proposed something we want to do?
> >
> > I'm not really excited about building WiX on Linux (nor maintaining 
> > a CI system that builds on multiple platforms). I'd rather we use 
> > VS's ability build Linux binaries so we can build everything from Windows.
> > I'd be interested to understand where that doesn't work.
> >
> > As for VS versions, we were already looking at taking a dependency 
> > on
> > 16.6.3 (or something later than that) for the enhanced wild-card 
> > support for NuGet packages. IIRC, we also decided to cut our
> > (dutil,wcautil,balutil) lib's support to VS2017+ which means we can 
> > build all native code from VS2019 now.
> >
> > I think that says we'll only support a recent version of VS2019 to 
> > build the WiX Toolset.
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: wix-devs <wix-devs-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> On Behalf Of 
> > Sean Hall via wix-devs
> > Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2020 2:42 AM
> > To: WiX Toolset Developer Mailing List 
> > <wix-devs at lists.wixtoolset.org>
> > Cc: Sean Hall <r.sean.hall at gmail.com>
> > Subject: [wix-devs] Linux changes
> >
> > We have a couple of PRs to start supporting Linux -
> > https://github.com/wixtoolset/Tools/pull/44 and 
> > https://github.com/wixtoolset/Core/pull/165.
> >
> > dotnet.exe does not support '/' for switches, even on Windows. Maybe 
> > we should remove support for it as well?
> >
> > v3 had a very complicated build system to try to support building 
> > WiX with many different versions of VS. How flexible are we going to 
> > try to be in v4? Are the OS conditioned changes that I proposed 
> > something we
> want to do?
> >
> >
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