[digianarchist]

It's shocking to me that Microsoft aren't heavily involved with the project considering it's one of the fundamental frameworks for releasing software on Windows.

I've had the displeasure of using Wix and it's an incredibly complicated and poorly documented platform that had us reaching for paid competitors in order to get our installer shipped.

I realized shortly after that it's not really Wix's fault. Windows is squarely to blame for the mess that is writing a workable Windows installer. The paid competitors had a lot of the same issues as the open source frameworks.

[WorldMaker]

> It's shocking to me that Microsoft aren't heavily involved with the project considering it's one of the fundamental frameworks for releasing software on Windows.

The history of WiX is that it started internally at Microsoft. IIRC it was a project under the Office organization originally. It's generally considered the first big open source success of Microsoft in spinning a project out to open source community ownership and paved the way for almost every later open source project at Microsoft.

I've got a feeling Microsoft doesn't want to support it anymore because they see it as completely legacy today. WiX is one of the better/cheaper/harder ways to build an old school MSI file. MSI installers are an ancient archive format (the old CAB format) wrapping an ancient and dying DB format (the old JET database engine) and a lot of the complexity of the WiX toolkit is just a reflection of the complex legacy of the old terrible MSI output format. Today Microsoft suggests using MSIX which looks a lot more directly like the better/simpler input to a (well crafted greenfield) WiX project, it's a plain ZIP file with XML metadata.

[robmensching]

> IIRC it was a project under the Office organization originally.

I worked in Office in 1999 when I created WiX but it definitely was not an "Office project". It wasn't until I left Office for project in Windows Server that Office adopted the WiX Toolset (to replace their custom system). The interaction with Office was always interesting.

> I've got a feeling Microsoft doesn't want to support it anymore because they see it as completely legacy today.

I think that's probably fair. The problem is that nobody has created an installation technology that is as fully featured as the Windows Installer. There are a lot of warts to the Windows Installer. It was designed to support floppy disks for goodness sake, but they were the last team IMHO that took the installation problem seriously. That's why MSI hasn't been replaced in 25 years.

> WiX toolkit is just a reflection of the complex legacy of the old terrible MSI output format.

Our primary goal with the WiX Toolset was to provide access to the full power of the Windows Installer. Given the adoption by extremely large software projects, I think we've done pretty well toward that goal. We're slowly turning our attention to simplifying the toolset to make it easier to use for simpler projects. But that's only been a focus for the last couple of years, so not a lot has come about, yet. But the Files element is a huge upgrade.

[WorldMaker]

I appreciate the primary source corrections and expansions!

[Cadwhisker]

For reference, here is the MSIX Toolset code repository:

https://github.com/microsoft/MSIX-Toolkit

[jhot]

I've been out of the windows world for about 10 years or so, but before that I was the one tasked at my company with streamlining our installers from a CI/CD perspective. I do agree that WiX is complicated and you really have to dig through the docs and do a lot of trial and error, but at the time I couldn't find any alternatives that allowed for the automation that I could achieve with WiX.

That said it was still somewhat ugly: msbuild the application, potentially copy in some dll's that weren't included in the output, use WiX's "heat" tool to generate installer files from the build output, use a xslt to transform that output to match how we installed shared libraries and such, build the installer with generated files, run automated ui tests and filesystem validations.

At the time installshield, advanced installer, and a few other tools I tried did not have the same flexibility to generate installers and automatically pick up file changes like WiX (without opening up a UI).

I'm so glad I haven't had to think about the nightmare that is MSI in over a decade.

[robmensching]

Yeah, the build system integration was always one of the core benefits provided by the WiX Toolset. I know you're not working with MSI any longer, but in recent versions of WiX Toolset we _finally_ nailed down how to include files in the .wxs file using the new `Files` element in a way that wouldn't break other MSI features (like patching).

[richrichardsson]

> it's an incredibly complicated and poorly documented

So much this. I was interested in using WiX, but it's just impenetrable for a noob, and any "beginners" guides were either hugely out of date or just assumed you understood what GUID you should be using and if it was important or not to change the example they gave. Quickly gave up. :(

[robmensching]

I'm not sure you're still interested but our Quick Start is much, much better and rolls straight into our tutorial. Now there is still a lot of work for us to do but it's better.

I made the huge mistake of believing that the community would help with documentation. I knew working with the internals of the Windows Installer would be challenging for most developers, but I really thought they'd help share what they learned and contribute to the documentation. Almost no one did. So, I've picked it up as a task we're doing at FireGiant... but there is a lot to do and it will take time.

[tempodox]

> Microsoft aren't heavily involved

Be glad of that. Anything where Microsoft aren't involved is a plus. Microsoft is one of those things you don't want to depend on.

[truemotive]

This guy definitely has used WiX. What a nightmare!