You all speak like a bunch of engineers :)
From: Christopher Painter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008 9:28 PM
To: Rob Mensching; dB.; Daniel Hughes; wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [WiX-users] WIX 3.0 release date
I've often thought about creating and marketing my own bootstrapper
product. I know the stories and requirements inside out as I've done
serviced product lines with vastly more complex prereq requirements then
vs and office. The problem is I could only write in in C# as my C++
skills suck.
WiX is a lot close to mass adoption then even Rob knows. A solid
bootstrapper and a full featured designer exposing the majority of WiX
capabilities along with a sprinkling of custom actions would work
miracles in terms of adoption.
Rob Mensching <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Fair.
Of course, I don't think we should be looking to take over the
world with the WiX toolset (we probably need more people answering
questions and improving the overall documentation before getting
thousands and thousands more users ) but I'm always open to suggestions
about what we should do. What do other people think about purely fixing
the bugs in the WiX toolset and adding no more functionality?
That means there will be no bootstrapper in WiX v3 and no
improvement to the IIS CustomActions to better handle IIS7. Basically,
imagine the WiX v3 toolset functionality of today plus fixing ~150 bugs.
Thoughts?
-----Original Message-----
From: dB. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008 12:44
To: Rob Mensching; Daniel Hughes;
wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: RE: [WiX-users] WIX 3.0 release date
Rob,
I think you completely nailed it when you say "We could cut the
bootstrapper (again) to focus solely on bugs and probably
"finish" WiX
v3 sooner but I believe the bootstrapper is more important than
that."
This is a typical dilemma of any software project. If Wix cost
100$ you
could make 100'000$ by the end of the year if you were to ship
in
October. Or you could delay that revenue into 2009 with the risk
of
losing market share (people using InstallShield, etc.).
I fought several arguments where people were trying to use wix
2.0 +
very nasty custom actions vs. wix 3.0 with built-in extensions
just
because wix 3.0 hasn't shipped yet. I bet many people are having
similar
arguments in the real world.
cheers
-dB.
-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Mensching [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008 2:22 PM
To: dB.; Daniel Hughes; wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: RE: [WiX-users] WIX 3.0 release date
Interesting. Let's go back and look at the things that are
driving the
WiX v3 release.
1. Bugs. WiX v2 was marked "stable" by pushing a number of bugs
to WiX
v3 (especially Votive bugs). There are still a lot of bugs open
that
need to be fixed. I do not just want to push a bunch of WiX v2
bugs to
WiX v4.
2. Patching. Patching is hard with MSI and the new tools in WiX
v3 can
help a lot. Those tools are basically done and we're just
running down
the bug tail now.
3. Votive. Votive was *very* rough in WiX v2. It had years to go
before it was going to truly useable. In WiX v3, Justin and a
lot of
help from members of the VS team have made Votive far more
usable.
There are still a lot of bugs to fix and the only reason I think
it can
be done this year is because of the VS help. Otherwise, I'm
quite
certain we'd *still* have a very crippled VS story.
4. Bootstrapper. Every other day or so there is another request
for
chaining/bootstrapping. Some of the solutions out there meet
some
people's needs but IMHO none of them have all of the features
that are
needed to meet the majority of bootstrapping needs. This part of
the
WiX toolset is about 2 years late and I think it is a big
mistake to go
into 2009 without a useable bootstrap story.
5. DTF. After finally deciding that the MSI team was not going
to do
it, I asked Jason Ginchereau if he would like to add DTF to WiX
v3.
This codebase was pretty stable so my expectation was that this
wouldn't
affect our bug count much.
Now let's talk about who's doing all of this work. I'm driving
the bug
count overall with help from the area owners. Peter Marcu
(http://blogs.msdn.com/pmarcu) is driving the patching support
backed up
by Heath Stewart (http://blogs.msdn.com/heaths). Votive is lead
by
Justin Rockwood (http://blogs.msdn.com/jrock/) and Jason
Ginchereau
(http://blogs.msdn.com/jasongin)'s team from VS. The
bootstrapper code
base is being developed by Fredrik Grohn
(http://fredrikgrohn.com) and
hopefully will be added to WiX soon. DTF is, of course, Jason's
baby.
Bob Arnson (http://www.joyofsetup.com) basically helps out
everywhere.
With the exception of the VS team I would guess that each of
those
people donate about 10 hours per week to the toolset. There are
others
but that is the bulk of regular development happening on the WiX
toolset. The sheer number of hours available to address bugs is
why I
think it will take until the end of the year. We could cut the
bootstrapper (again) to focus solely on bugs and probably
"finish" WiX
v3 sooner but I believe the bootstrapper is more important than
that.
Plus, this is a volunteer project so it is hard to expect
everyone to
stay excited about solely fixing bugs for 6+ months.
You should look at what parts of the WiX toolset you depend one
when
judging stability. If you just want the core toolset (candle,
light)
then that code base is very stable in v3. Arguably it is more
stable
than it was in WiX v2 (certainly more bug fixes). Granted v3 can
change
from build to build so you might pick up a bug but we fix core
toolset
regressions very, very quickly. As for Votive, I don't think you
can
compare the stability differences from v2 to v3. V3 is so much
more
feature rich and useful. That said, there is a lot of effort
going into
Votive right now and there have been some nasty bugs with VS2005
integration lately. Patching (pyro, torch)... those tools are
quite
stable but new so you might find new things. DTF, has been
around for a
long time and the bug fixes seem to reflect that.
Ultimately, I believe that "stability" in the WiX toolset is
measured by
the number of changes going into the codebase. WiX v2 has no
development so it is *extremely* stable. WiX v3 is quite
functional but there are bug fixes going in so we have to
"reserve the
right" to accidentally break stuff that works. Pick you risk
profile
and go from there.
-----Original Message-----
From: dB. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008 10:17
To: Rob Mensching; Daniel Hughes;
wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: RE: [WiX-users] WIX 3.0 release date
I understand this approach, but it's very
Microsoft-Windows-like: a
project that lasts years. I am fine using wix in its beta form,
but
that's because I am both management and development. Had I been
only
management, I wouldn't have made this call.
My 0.02c is that it would greatly benefit wix adoption to
stabilize on a
more limited feature set and release 3.0 in 2008.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Rob
Mensching
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008 12:49 PM
To: Daniel Hughes; wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [WiX-users] WIX 3.0 release date
1. The "SourceForge drops" weren't any different than the weekly
releases. Since there is a fair bit of overhead in getting the
drops on
to the SourceForge releases page, the cost to benefit ratio
wasn't
working out.
2. We could do a drop to the "releases page" but it really
wouldn't be
any different than a "weekly release". Instead, I've been
considering
"releasing" a web page that points at the weekly releases to
make it
clearer where to get WiX v3 drops.
3. I expect WiX v3 will come out of beta sometime mid-next year.
My
hope is to get all of the major features and the majority of the
bug
back log taken care of by the end of this year and then just
bake for 9
or so months.
4. I have an old blog post that talks about what WiX v3 is about
(http://robmensching.com/blog/archive/2007/04/10/WiX-v3-Roadmap-Draft.as
px). The ClickThrough features on that roadmap are probably not
going
to make it since we have a larger bug count than anticipated.
Also,
IIS7 is turning out to be a pain point that I believe we're
going to
have to find some way to tackle. Plenty of work to be done
before the
end of the year.
5. To be clear, we're focused on working towards completing WiX
v3
right now, not stabilizing it. "Completing" means we're fixing
every bug
and getting features checked in. "Stabilizing" means punting
bugs and
definitely not adding features. We spent about a year
"stabilizing" WiX
v2 before a lot of people suggested that it was done. I'm hoping
we
move a bit faster through stabilizing WiX v3 since the VS team
has
donated a few extra resources.
6. Note: we had someone during the WiX v2 timeframe that took
the
effort to pick "high quality" v2 builds and push them out to
SourceForge. If you wanted to start managing that type of
process for
WiX v3, feel free to contact me and we can talk about it.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Daniel
Hughes
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2008 18:43
To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: [WiX-users] WIX 3.0 release date
Hi,
I have noticed that WIX 3.0 has been a beta for a long time.
The current source forge drop is now over a year old 2007-05-25
09:31,
Thats a long time people.... that drop didn't even work with
VS2008
I know you can get the weekly builds but those of us who want to
use WIX
3.0 in our products require something a little more proven then
a weekly
release.....
So when is WIX 3.0 coming out of BETA.... and when do we get at
least
another sourceforge drop...
Is their some kind of roadmap.... or at least some kind of
estimate for
the release date... What about a list of stuff which needs doing
before
the release....?
Cheers,
Daniel
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