![]() ![]() How do you incorporate it into a CI process?.How do you create a Windows Installer package automatically?.I also wanted to introduce a Continuous Delivery model with code changes being immediately and automatically deployed to a test environment. The IT Ops organization wanted to use Windows Installers (.msi) instead of ClickOnce so that they could enforce group policies on the app. Developers published new builds from their machines using Visual Studio (Build > Publish > follow the wizard), copy-pasted the output to a shared network drive, from where users would download or update the app. The existing dev team was deploying manually using ClickOnce. They were interested in incorporating CI, build automation and other best practices… but I had never done this for a Windows application before. Recently I was helping a client with a mission-critical Windows Forms application. Hopefully you (or I) never have to do this ever… but if you do, hope this helps! The Challenge This post is about one such project: implementing a Continuous Delivery process for a Windows app. Do you say “screw this, I’m not working on outdated stuff,” or do you grit your teeth and get the job done? Such projects test the consultant’s mettle. The wxs project template looks identical to v3.Ĭonsidering the progress of v4, although I admit I'm quite new to this, I found a page here going back as far as end 2012!Ī more recent article on WiX v4.0 and it's features can be found hereīug fix logs also imply v4 is being developed alongside v3, however indeed without formal confirmation, official releases, or any documentation whatsoever.Note: Shout out to my colleague Nolan Egly for all his help getting me to understand WiX.Īs software consultants we get to ride the wave of new technologies - learning new things, moving from project to project, staying on the bleeding edge, right?Įvery now and then, a client project throws you a double-whammy: something hard to learn and with no prospects of long-term usefulness. I've installed v4., and it appears to work with the integrated Visual Studio WiX extension v4 projects, though I've not tested this extensively. WiX v4 does appear as a number of weekly releases which can be downloaded and installed. From this I was able to update my open source project IsWiX to completely support v3 or v4 using Votive or HeatWave.Īll in all it's looking really good and once all the final bugs are gone I will be migrating all of my customers over to WiX v4. ![]() WiX is no longer installed on the build server as msbuild will automatically install the SDK package references.įireGiant reached out to be before the release and gave me a preview look. Heatwave will do this for you in a one time project by project conversion step. There is a tool to covnvert v3 schema to v4 schema called WiXCop. References to extensions are no longer DLL references but Nuget package references. wixproj which is now an SDK style project. Instead FireGiant has a closed source but free replacement called HeatWave. ![]() ![]() If your a user of Votive, Votive is no more. In WiX v4, there is no installer for WiX. WiX v4 is very close to being ready and I encourage active testing of it during the RC phase. Is there something somewhere that says officially, definitively what state WiX v4 is in? This is a crazy amount of mixed messages. To download WiX Toolset v4, see despite the fact that contains downloads exclusively for v3! However, there are no released versions for v4 on GitHub: Īnd the Wix homepage still directs you to download v3.Īnd one of the developer's blogs has a recent post about v4 that uses future-tense language like "will have" and "should support".īut worst of all, the current version of the WiX visual studio integration tools has templates for v4, which makes it seem like v4 is officially supported!Īnd when you try to build one of these templates the build error is The WiX Toolset v4 build tools must be installed. And it has an official release page on the WiX site, without any mention of "Beta" or "Release Candidate", etc: Lots of people seem to already be using WiX v4, as evidenced by SO questions about it. Is WiX v4 released? In Development? In Beta? Still being designed? I really feel like I shouldn't have to ask a question on SO to get basic information like this, but I can't find a reliable source anywhere. ![]()
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