Joy of Setup

WiX v3.0.4429.0 was released on Friday, 29-August-08. You can download it from http://wix.sourceforge.net/releases/3.0.4429.0/.

New features

• Aaron added properties to WixVSExtension to detect Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.
• Aaron also added a new custom action, WixExitEarlyWithSuccess, which makes it easy to exit without error in a major upgrade when a later version is already installed.
• I updated make.bat and wix.build to pass desired verbosity from the NAnt side of the build to the MSBuild side.
• Candy Chiang, of the team integrating WiX into Visual Studio, contributed many updates to the WiX.chm documentation.

Bug fixes

• 1591591: scawebsvcext.cpp does not work in IIS 5
• 1741663: WebAppPool Fails on IIS < 6.0
• 1848752: NativeImage CA never runs
• 2010047: Cannot add wixlib to project
• 2041989: Candle exception when inculding an invalid wxi file
• 2077095: Firewall Extension fails
• Eric St. John fixed a bug in the CloseApplication custom action to correctly send close messages to all the top-level windows of the specified process, which should fix the problem noted on wix-users where CloseApplication didn’t work with VB6 apps.

Rick Brewster of the Paint.NET team blogged about the pain of getting Paint.NET installed on a system without the .NET Framework. It’s fair to say that for a system running Windows XP without optional updates, installing the latest and greatest Framework is an annoying exercise. Part of the problem (blame) falls on the shoulders of the Framework folks: The Framework installer should install MSI 3.1 for users; asking them to go spelunking on the Microsoft Download Center for the MSI 3.1 redistributable, then run it and reboot, is rude at best.

Rick’s proposed solution for the next release of Paint.NET is OK, though it has the downside of showing several very different UI experiences:

• A "confirmation" dialog that tells users that prerequisites will be installed.
• The OS-component update dialog (for MSI 3.1) that most users no longer see, because it’s hidden behind Windows Update.
• The .NET Framework Client Profile bootstrapper UI, which is slightly different than the OS-component update dialog.
• The Paint.NET installer configuration UI, which is slightly different than the others.
• The Paint.NET installer UI itself, which uses MSI basic UI.
• If needed, a "reboot needed" dialog, which uses slightly different UI.

A key scenario for Burn is to enable this scenario (with the Client Profile or "normal" .NET Framework installation). Part of being successful with that scenario is to have an integrated experience, which means having a consistent user interface and one progress bar.

We’re not there yet, but know that we’re working hard to solve this problem.

WiX v3.0.4422.0 was released on Friday, 22-August-08. You can download it from http://wix.sourceforge.net/releases/3.0.4422.0/.

New features

• Aaron added documentation on properties used in the MSBuild tasks and targets.
• Dan Manson added a strong-name skip-verification entry so builds on x64 OSes work without registry hacks.
• Eric St. John added the ElevatedCloseMessage attribute to the WixUtilExtension CloseApplication element (and corresponding custom action implementation), to send a close message to the target process’s windows while running deferred.

Bug fixes

• 1708072: Access Violation with Large Cabinets
• 1827123: Can’t create sql database with name contains ‘-’
• 1881660: IIS Extension: Unable to install Certificate from MSM
• 1881856: IIS Extension: Unable uninstalling certificate under VISTA
• 1930640: PFXImportCertStore() fails to delete private key containers.
• 1984738: SchedXmlFile does not return ERROR_INSTALL_USEREXIT
• 2013549: Pyro is unnecessary slow
• 2023959: ConfigureEventManfiest returns ERROR_INSTALL_FAIL on cancel
• 2034934: Binder variable File IDs are not modularized
• 2041989: Candle exception when inculding an invalid wxi file
• Chris Araman cleaned up some warnings in native code.
• Mike Carlson fixed the preprocessor to handle variable names containing a dot in ifdef/ifndef checks.
• Mike also fixed the WixUtilExtension User custom action so that on uninstall, it removes the user from groups it was added to if the user isn’t deleted on uninstall.

[Updated with actual features -v- bug fixes.]

WiX v3.0.4415.0–code-named Heat-Wave-in-Seattle?!–was released on Friday, 15-August-08. You can download it from http://wix.sourceforge.net/releases/3.0.4415.0/.

New features

• Jason added to DTF support for MSI 4.5’s embedded UI, along with a sample that uses WPF for the UI.
• Eric St. John added support for standard command-line switches to the WiX v3 bootstrapper.

Bug fixes

• 1273447: Can’t put RegLocator inside DrLocator
• 1613071: Unable to save VS project
• 1832500: Preprocessor: nested include uses wrong directory
• 2051748: SqlDatabase table definition error
• I worked around a bug in MSI 4.5’s support for embedded UI. The FileName column purports to be of the Filename type, which requires both short (8.3) and long file names. It turns out only one file name, long or short, is supported.
• Aaron fixed bugs in the ShellExec custom action topic and the how-tos that referred to it.
• Jungwook Bae, of the Visual Studio team integrating WiX, fixed some bugs in Votive to make it behave more like C# projects.

WiX v3.0.4401.0 was released on Friday, 01-August-08. You can download it from http://wix.sourceforge.net/releases/3.0.4401.0/.

New features

• Neil Enns continues to add topics and fix bugs in the documentation.
• Mike Carlson made the Id/Name attribute default values (in the File element, from the @Source attribute) when used from a fragment.

Bug fixes

• 2011737: Deleting an Element with XmlConfig always results in Failure
• 2027482: Exception when AssemblyManifest does not exist
• 2031498: EmbeddedUIResource