Christopher,
Perhaps you could put together your list of 'best case' requirements for a
bootstrapper? It seems like building one isn't going to be that
difficult, but it also seems that the project is starved of good
requirements and direction around the bootstrapper.
Once there's a good list of 'this is what it has to do', people can start
to hack away at what's the most important of those features...
Of course, I'm just an outsider, it just seemed to me that since you have
the knowledge, if you could dedicate a few minutes to come up with a list,
people may be able to run with it. I'd offer to make such a list myself,
but I've got nothing near the experience you have in Deployment
Engineering.
I do have the C++ skills and would be happy to help out if somebody could
help me get 'into' it. The problem I've had so far is that I don't really
have a good feel for the problems being solved (and there's not a really
good doc on how to get started contributing - i.e. how to get the build
environment up and working, etc.). To me, the bootstrapper is a good
point to get in, since it shouldn't be tightly integrated to the WiX
codebase and as such shouldn't be too difficult to get it up and
building...
Kelly
Christopher Painter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
05/27/2008 06:27 PM
To
Rob Mensching <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "dB." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Daniel Hughes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
"wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net" <wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net>
cc
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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