[wix-users] WiX 4.0 Errors and Current / Future State Questions

Fri Sep 4 12:46:22 PDT 2015

I've published my findings at : http://blog.iswix.com/2015/09/iswix40152471-released.html  and a new release of IsWiX at https://iswix.codeplex.com/releases/view/617164.

There's a screenshot on the above blog post that shows the  dual sxs v3/v4  templates user experience.    What I'm seeing is that currently   which ever version of Votive gets installed or repaired last, wins (including project templates).     With my sxs project templates I am able to create and build v3 and v4 projects whether v3 or v4 Votive is registered.

It's actually not that bad.  I know I saw some other threads about splitting pieces of WiX out into their own units.  Perhaps this is a case for Votive.  Maybe Votive should just be a generic container to hold either v3 or v4 projects and the latest version of it included in the latest versions of v3 and v4 bundles.  The v3 and v4 bundles could then have their own isolated/localized project templates.

Just a thought....

________________________________________
From: wix-users <wix-users-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> on behalf of Rob Mensching <rob at firegiant.com>
Sent: Friday, September 4, 2015 1:22 PM
To: WiX Toolset Users Mailing List
Subject: Re: [wix-users] WiX 4.0 Errors and Current / Future State Questions

Two thoughts:

1. That would be pretty nice if it works that simply.
2. I'm pretty confident if it doesn't just work that we'll end up breaking it before v4 ships. <smile/>

So... I think it'd be a cool thing for someone to test out. If  it works out, then it'd be good to see how fragile the changes look.

_______________________________________________________________
 FireGiant  |  Dedicated support for the WiX toolset  |  http://www.firegiant.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: wix-users [mailto:wix-users-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org] On Behalf Of Christopher Painter
Sent: Friday, September 4, 2015 4:20 AM
To: WiX Toolset Users Mailing List <wix-users at lists.wixtoolset.org>
Subject: Re: [wix-users] WiX 4.0 Errors and Current / Future State Questions

I've looked at the implications of Votive V4 taking over and it's not quiet what I thought and presuming not much changes in Votive  (which I doubt it will)  it's really not so bad.

My testing indicates that a .sln/.wixsproj created using v3  opens and builds in v4 using the v3 targets without any issues.  You simply loose the ability to create new v3 projects.

I think the simple solution to votive v3/v4 isolation might be to rename the v4 project templates to be side by side with the v3 templates.  I think that's all I have to do with my project templates also.    Instead of v3 or v4 templates I do v3 and/or v4 templates depending on which WiX(s) I detect installed.

Comments? Should this be captured as a WIP or something?

________________________________________
From: Christopher Painter
Sent: Thursday, September 3, 2015 10:13 AM
To: WiX Toolset Users Mailing List
Subject: Re: WiX 4.0 Errors and Current / Future State Questions

Fair enough.  I'll do my work and now and then it should all line up in the future.   Hopefully this will cut down on the support emails that I'm getting where someone installed v4 and then complains that IsWiX is broken. :)

The single votive is the easiest for me to support.  I just implement mutually exclusive components for the zip files that contain the projects. I'll need to observe how sxs works though and adapt my own projects if that ends up getting scoped.

Thanks for everything,
Chris

________________________________________
From: wix-users <wix-users-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> on behalf of Rob Mensching <rob at firegiant.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 3, 2015 9:31 AM
To: WiX Toolset Users Mailing List
Subject: Re: [wix-users] WiX 4.0 Errors and Current / Future State Questions

Two things:

1. We are in middle of WiX v4.0 development. Plenty is still broken. Focus will finally shift from v3.x to v4.x after v3.10 is released.

2. AFAIK, no one plans to all the work to make Votive SxS so while the rest of the tools will install SxS Votive will likely have to in place upgrade.

_______________________________________________________________
 FireGiant  |  Dedicated support for the WiX toolset  |  http://www.firegiant.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: wix-users [mailto:wix-users-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org] On Behalf Of Christopher Painter
Sent: Thursday, September 3, 2015 5:38 AM
To: wix-users at lists.wixtoolset.org
Subject: [wix-users] WiX 4.0 Errors and Current / Future State Questions

I maintain a certain open source project (http://iswix.codeplex.com)  that currently works with WiX 3.x.  I'm currently going through the code base and refactoring it to be compatible with WiX 3.x and WiX 4.x.  In doing so, a few questions have come up:

1) WiX 4.x and 3.9 installed side by side however WiX 4.x votive took over.   I have project templates for 3.x and 4.x and for now I'm thinking that if I detect 4.x I should install the 4.x templates otherwise install the 3.x templates.  Is this correct or will there eventually be an ability to say File | New | Project and select either 3.x or 4.x compatible projects?

2) After doing my refactoring I got light errors in my wxs.  Wanting to rule out that my project templates are buggy I reproduced these errors using the WiX provided project templates.  They are as such:

a) Adding a UIRef to WiXUI_Advanced, WiXUI_FeatureTree, WiXUI_InstallDir or WiXUI_Mondo generates the error:

Error '.', hexadecimal value 0x00, is an invalid character. SetupProject2 light.exe

b) Adding a UIRef to WiXUI_Minimal generates the error:

Error Duplicate symbol 'WixAction:InstallUISequence/WelcomeEulaDlg' referenced by C:\agent\_work\335d34b3\wix4\src\ext\UIExtension\wixlib\WixUI_Minimal.wxs(60). This typically means that an Id is duplicated. Ensure all your identifiers of a given type (File, Component, Feature) are unique or use an access modifier to scope the identfier. SetupProject2 C:\agent\_work\335d34b3\wix4\src\ext\UIExtension\wixlib\WelcomeEulaDlg.wxs 54

Now I could just comment out my UIRef for now but a bigger show stopper for me is:

c) When I add a Merge element I get an error message saying it doesn't belong to a feature (as it should).  However when I add the MergeRef element to the feature I get the error:

Error Value cannot be null. SetupProject2 light.exe 0

So overall, I'm wanting to adapt my toolset to support 4.x so that a 4.x user can use my toolset and so that a user already using my toolset can use 4.x.   Am I just too early?    Are these issues to be expected?

Thanks,

Chris

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WiX Toolset Users Mailing List provided by FireGiant http://www.firegiant.com/

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WiX Toolset Users Mailing List provided by FireGiant http://www.firegiant.com/

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WiX Toolset Users Mailing List provided by FireGiant http://www.firegiant.com/