So you want to be a Windows Installer XML developer?

re: So you want to be a Windows Installer XML developer?

shayne — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 13:24:00 GMT

lol

re: So you want to be a Windows Installer XML developer?

shayne — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 13:26:00 GMT

No seriously man. lol.

re: So you want to be a Windows Installer XML developer?

ian — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 13:52:00 GMT

good post but all pretty standard for open source. Maybe this is the first open source project you've worked on or at least it looks that way from the wording of item 2). In my experience with a number of different oss projects almost no one expects commit access right away. What usually happens is that once a given developer is consistently submitting clean and useful patches that require a minimum of review and demonstrates deep knowledge of the project in mailing list discussions its simply easier for the project leaders to give them commit access than to continue reviewing every patch.
I would encourage the sending of patches to a developer mailing list so that they can get peer reviewed by multiple people. Of course you still have the final say - its your project - but posting to a public forum gives you one of the key benefits of the oss model. Quite often I've learnt new things or taken different design decisions based on input from unexpected sources. You'll find that there are people using the code in ways that you'd never thought about.

ditto item 4 - by definition most developers on oss projects are volunteers. Maybe this is becoming less true for some bigger commercially sponsered projects but in the main it still holds.

re: So you want to be a Windows Installer XML developer?

Rob Mensching — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 18:03:00 GMT

ian,

Thanks for confirming (at least tentatively) that the WiX project isn’t significantly different from any other OSS project. With this blog entry, I was trying to get all of the administrivia out of the way so that anyone who is new to the Open Source development process or questioned if a Microsoft sponsored OSS project was the same as other OSS projects could read through it right here and (hopefully) understand how this project works.

Also, I very much like your suggestion about sending diffs to the mailing list. I will update this blog entry with that suggestion.

re: So you want to be a Windows Installer XML developer?

Mattie Casper — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 18:51:00 GMT

I second the motion of sending code diffs to a developer mailing list for peer review. (I wouldn't recommend them for the general users mailing list, though.)

re: So you want to be a Windows Installer XML developer?

Reid Gustin — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 23:05:00 GMT

ian: As for developers using the code in ways that we'd never thought about, there's no question about it. It's been really interesting to watch the bugs that come in to the SoruceForge project, as so many of them relate to Dark. The Dark decompilation tool is new, and only used lightly internally. The code is getting put through its paces in so many ways that we haven't hit yet at Microsoft, and I think what's going to happen is that the quality bar on Dark in particular will shoot up in the next couple of weeks. Very cool stuff.

re: So you want to be a Windows Installer XML developer?

Peter Torr — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 01:08:00 GMT

This is not a cheer-ocracy. Rob is the cheer-tator. He will make the cheer-isions around here, and he will deal with the cheer-onsequences :-)

Any cheer-estions? :-)

--
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0277371/quotes

re: So you want to be a Windows Installer XML developer?

AT — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 04:45:00 GMT

;o) Hmm .. I was thinking it was copyrighted to IBM.

CPL.TXT file in sources-2.0.1605.1.zip reffer to IBM as "Agreement Steward" and entire agreement if governed by the laws of NY instead of WA ;o)
Taking IBM as "Agreement Steward" make it impossible for Microsoft to change license to own code.

Probably copy/paste error ? Or Microsoft was lazy to write and support own Open Source compatable license agreement ?

re: So you want to be a Windows Installer XML developer?

Rob Mensching — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 08:22:00 GMT

I have updated this blog entry to fix the mailto: links (they were all corrupt) and note that diffs should sent to the newly created WiX-devs@lists.sourceforge.net as per the suggestions above. Thanks.

re: So you want to be a Windows Installer XML developer?

Rob Mensching — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 08:40:00 GMT

AT,

IBM is the steward of the CPL license but not the Windows Installer XML toolset code that is licensed under the CPL. If you look at the top of any of the source files, you will see that Microsoft holds the copyright on all of the source code posted to the WiX SourceForge project.

Also, what value is there in anyone (not just Microsoft) creating another license (OSS or not) when a license that seems pretty appropriate already exists? It seems very likely that people would criticize your efforts if you created a license that duplicated an existing license. Ultimately, the CPL was a good fit for the Windows Installer XML toolset so that is what we chose.

re: So you want to be a Windows Installer XML developer?

Catalin — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 12:49:00 GMT

I want to know...what is the advantage of this toolkit versus the classic Orca ? I still don't understand what advantages does this solution hold over creating the MSI with Orca.

re: So you want to be a Windows Installer XML developer?

Orion Edwards — Mon, 26 Apr 2004 12:06:00 GMT

Advantage over orca? Scriptability. That's the whole point of it. The only way to put things into tables in orca is by point and click. You can't for example put it in an automated build process. You can with wix.

Also many people find it more convenient to edit a file (especially with visual studio's xsd-based autocomplete, which is great) rather than to click around a million dialog boxes. (Hence I'd prefer wix over installshield any day) Pretty much just use orca as a debugging tool.

re: So you want to be a Windows Installer XML developer?

Catalin — Wed, 05 May 2004 11:16:00 GMT

Well, I put things in my databases using the Windows Installer object which I instantiate in a script. The only advantage I see for wix are:

1) The text source files are kept better with source control systems than the msi binaries ?

2) Better control over intellectual property ?

3) The resemblance with the traditional coding stages ( write text source code, compile, and link to a binary ).

4) Maybe the next MSI file format will be XML-based ? :)

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