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Visual Studio will not ship the WiX toolset, contributes only.

# by Rob Mensching on Wednesday, April 01, 2009 2:59 PM

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It was almost two years ago when Visual Studio approached me about shipping the WiX toolset in Visual Studio. We built a plan that combined the efforts of program management, developers, testers, documentation and localization people from Visual Studio with the volunteer group to release the WiX toolset version 3.0 as part of Visual Studio 2010. We executed on that plan to deliver the WiX toolset as part of the Visual Studio 2010 CTP and were on track to deliver for Beta 1.

In that time we went from over a hundred bugs open to under thirty. Everything in the WiX toolset just works better and so much of that is due to the quiet efforts of those in Visual Studio. However, over that time, the entire management chain from lead up to (but not including) Soma changed. With that amount of change in management comes a potential change in approach.

With that cliffhanger in place, let me switch to Q&A mode. Note, these are my answers based on my conversations with the Visual Studio team.

Q: What is Visual Studio's new approach to the WiX toolset?

A: The WiX toolset is a great compliment to Visual Studio. WiX provides complete access to the Windows Installer technology and integrates well into the build process. Visual Studio will continue to contribute to the project but will not ship the WiX toolset.

Q: That means the WiX toolset *not* be part of the Visual Studio install?

A: Correct. This is the biggest change in the relationship between WiX and VS. Previously, there were plans to ship a subset of the WiX toolset as part of some Visual Studio products. Now the focus is solely on contributing all changes to the WiX Open Source project.

Q: Why did Visual Studio change its approach to the WiX toolset?

A: There is a lot of overhead shipping the WiX toolset "in the box" of Visual Studio. From a business perspective, it isn't clear how shipping "in the box" adds significant value vs. purely contributing to the Open Source project.

Q: So is all of the work Visual Studio still going to be part of the WiX toolset?

A: Absolutely. The business decision to not ship the WiX toolset in Visual Studio does not diminish the value of the effort thus far. Instead, the Visual Studio team is narrowing their focus on distributing the code via a single means, the WiX toolset Open Source project.

Q: Is Visual Studio going to continue to contribute code to the WiX toolset?

A: For the near term, yes. There is a large body of code to support the new Visual Studio 2010 and MSBuild functionality to contribute in the next few weeks. I'm very excited about that (plus all the work already part of WiX v3). After that, we'll see how the Visual Studio team decides to proceed. I hope they continue to participate but their future is in their hands.

Q: What does this mean for the WiX toolset?

A: Not much directly. We wanted to deliver a production quality release of WiX v3 before the end of the year . The Visual Studio team has helped us do that and I really hope they will continue to do so. Personally, I would love it if Visual Studio was one more way to distribute the WiX toolset but that doesn't seem to align with their goals at this time.

Q: Does Visual Studio still provide food for the volunteers that work on the WiX toolset?

A: Yes and I very much appreciate that. I probably don't thank them enough. Visual Studio has done some very nice things to support the volunteers on the WiX toolset and we appreciate it. Delivering high quality tools that build high quality installation packages is in everyone's best interest.

We're proud to be fighting the good fight.

 

31 Comments

Comment by Jeff Hunsaker on Wednesday, April 01, 2009 4:16 PM

This reads to cleanly to be April Fools. Disappointed. Keep up the great work though Rob.

Comment by Devin on Wednesday, April 01, 2009 6:27 PM

This is a shame. Though I definitely see the value in keeping WiX external of VS, shipping it with VS would have shown an increased level of commitment to continuing WiX development by Microsoft which I think is lacking now, raising WiX to a first class citizen in the world of MSFT. The uncertainty surrounding the pace of development of WiX, even in your own comments, definitely makes it more difficult to sell WiX as a viable solution. For now it appears it will continue to be relegated to the role of black sheep of the MSFT family.

Comment by Greg Duncan on Wednesday, April 01, 2009 7:09 PM

April Fools? Or for real?

Comment by Christopher Painter on Thursday, April 02, 2009 6:37 AM

"We wanted to deliver a production quality release of WiX v3 before the end of the year." Which year is that? 2007, 2008, 2009 or 2010?

Comment by Rob Mensching on Thursday, April 02, 2009 9:38 AM

@Devin, I totally agree that VS shipping WiX would have demonstrated a high level of commitment. As for the pace of development, well, I'm managing "volunteer hours" which can be very elastic. That's why I'm cautious when I name dates. However, I hope there are no questions about the commitment of the volunteers to the WiX toolset and that we will deliver. If there are, please let me know if there is anything I can do to address those concerns.

Comment by Rob Mensching on Thursday, April 02, 2009 9:49 AM

@Christopher, that isn't fair. There were never any delusions that we'd ship WiX v3 in 2007. We signed up to be ready for "VS Rosario" in 2008 but Rosario was rolled into VS2010. Thus we had to work towards the VS2010 dates. Now we aren't delivering to anyone so I'm going back to my original (two year old) estimates that we'll be done by the "end of the year". This year. 2009.

Comment by Christopher Painter on Thursday, April 02, 2009 2:16 PM

Isn't fair? You have no idea how much this hurts my efforts to actually try to sell WiX where I work. I've been telling technology review boards and development that it's ok because WiX has been saying for the last three months that they are on a glide path for RTM. Now I have to go back and tell them that it's going to be another 9 months. There's no way they are going to let me get that far out in front of the curve. Just ship this thing already and scope 3.5 please. It's been 2006 since there was a release, volunteers or not.

Comment by Devin on Thursday, April 02, 2009 6:11 PM

@Rob: I have no doubts about the volunteers committment to WiX, and I *greatly* the time and effort all of you have put in, but in the end you are still all volunteers. The the reality is that by not being a real "product" a certain level of risk is added to WiX that not everyone is comfortable accepting, or as I said, it at least gives decision makers one more reason to not using WiX, which is unfortunate. By being officially recognizing as a product it would have make selling WiX as a solution much easier. It would have given customers a level of confidence that a volunteer project simply can never have, backed by PSS, not an external bolt on to VS, but instead a first-class citizen, or even that the developers won't some day grow tired of volunteering and development stops all together (I know you're all committed now, but things do change). I know that the volunteers are fully committed to continung development of WiX and continuing to deliver, and I know I will keep using WiX, but it is dissapointing to see that Microsoft management could not see what I (and I think many others as well) see as the significant value of WiX as a fantastic tool.

Comment by Rob Mensching on Thursday, April 02, 2009 9:51 PM

@Christopher, I'm very sorry that decisions outside of the control of those of us working on the WiX toolset have complicated your plans. I'll be sure to pass your displeasure on. Now to be clear, our glidepath was on track to ship *with* VS2010. That was *at least* 6 months out. If anything, I'm thinking about shipping earlier now that we aren't tied to VS.

Comment by Rob Mensching on Thursday, April 02, 2009 10:43 PM

@Devin, I understand. In my mind the biggest loss for the WiX toolset as a result of this change is "official support" from Microsoft. I know that this is the next hurdle we need to tackle and I thought I finally nailed it by shipping in VS. In any case, thank you for the kind words. I'll pass them on to the others. Morale has taken a hit so hearing that people appreciate the work goes a long way right now. I'll keep working on the support problem.

Comment by VirtualStaticVoid on Friday, April 03, 2009 1:52 AM

Keep up the good work! You guys rock! I can't see how not being part of VS is really a problem. WiX works, and if it doesn't, there clearly is a committed team to getting it fixed. And if all else fails, we have the source code!

Comment by Christopher Painter on Friday, April 03, 2009 3:55 AM

To me the biggest loss is it won't be a first class citizen in the visual studio world. Right now developers have to search WiX out. I have way too many developers who come to me and ask why we don't just use too many VDPROJ. VDPROJ needs to be hidden deep and out of site with WiX displayed prominently. I can accomplish that for us by pushing WiX into our developer images but that's just for our shop of a couple hundred developers. I'd love to see it embraced by a much larger ecosystem. Another huge loss is there is atleast 1 vendor I know who won't improve their tool until v3 is final and I'm pretty sure there's a second vendor waiting to finalize their strategy and I'm sure they are in the same boat. I really hope you can finish out the bug scrub in progress and post an official 3.0 release on SF. Then do your 3.x goodness such as burn. Rob- Please understand I'm only frustrated because I'm really trying hard to cross a bridge here from the tools I used to use to the tools I'd like to use.

Comment by brian on Friday, April 03, 2009 8:30 AM

I am sorry to hear this Rob. The whole Wix team in my opinion has done a great job! Keep up the hard work. Wix is a solid part of my Visual Studio and has solved my companies setup nightmares.. I know this decision is complicated and political. But I think this decision is a bad one. Perhaps Microsoft should spend a little money and see what developers really want from an installer. I see that they spend a lot of money on Vista for R&D and we get some good new things...but also some really ugly things also such as UAC. The biggest problem for large companies are that without support from microsoft and since Wix is not seen as a full product, it looks as if wix is just an open source project. I think you guys will overcome this though. Perhaps all that is needed is to create the same crappy gui that is already included in a VS setup project today and have it write wix xml on the back end. Then you have basically elimated setup projects.

Comment by Rob Mensching on Friday, April 03, 2009 8:46 AM

@VirtualStaticVoid, some companies (and maybe some individuals) want an official "throat to choke" when things go wrong. Without that insurance they are very wary of taking a dependency on the technology. That was why I was happy to take on the extra work necessary to ship with VS. Now, I'm back to looking for a solution to that problem.

Comment by Rob Mensching on Friday, April 03, 2009 9:09 AM

@Christopher, the target audience for .vdproj is very different than the audience for WiX and the rift between those tools is vast. It isn't easy (at any level) to just swap one out for the other. Also, I know that lots of people want an RTM WiX v3. They have for about a year now but there are still bugs. In fact, you have 3 bugs open right now? Can those be punted? If so, please do move them to v4. Otherwise, know that we are taking a critical eye to each bug and working through the remainder. Finally, many of us are frustrated. Imagine how frustrated the people that actually worked to make WiX part of Visual Studio feel. They are reading the comments here to see the reactions. Please understand that directing your frustration at the people that work to make the WiX toolset the best it can be does not help our progress in any way.

Comment by Rob Mensching on Friday, April 03, 2009 9:11 AM

@brian, thank you. I agree that support is our biggest hurdle. I think there are other solutions out for GUI's on WiX so that isn't the highest thing on my list to tackle. Finishing WiX v3 and searching for a support avenue is. :)

Comment by Stefan Krueger on Friday, April 03, 2009 10:41 AM

When I first read this I thought it was an April's Fool joke. But now that you have confirmed it in another post today, it understand that it's real. I'm sad to hear this and my sympathies go to the WiX team. I think this is a missed opportunity not only for WiX but also for Visual Studio. However it's only a missed step forward, it's not a step backward. So don't let this stop you in your enthusiasm - and keep coding :)

Comment by Christopher Painter on Friday, April 03, 2009 12:48 PM

I didn't realize it was my call to scope it for v3 or punt it to v4. Since you ask, yes, if Votive won't be integrated in VS2010 as a first class citizen, since Votive isn't critical core compiler/runtime code, I'd say it's nice to have and punt it to v4. Just my opinion. I only logged the issues as a hard core TFS user as a politeness to help you make your product better. The DTF stuff for me is much more mission critical as we really need a managed code custom action solution that is bulletproof. I don't want to choke anyones throat. We don't even expect support from open source projects. But my company does have policies about putting beta software into product line. Yes, I know, you say it's not beta but the reality is Sourceforge still says v3 is beta and weekly is just that.

Comment by Rob Mensching on Friday, April 03, 2009 4:18 PM

@Christopher, we have to assume every bug opened is an important issue for the person that opened it. If the person that opened the bug doesn't think it is important then they can certainly punt the bug. Usually, people want their bug fixed faster. Filing bugs is the best way to make WiX better, thank you for helping. Also, SourceForge says that the project is Production/Stable because WiX v2 is. On the news page WiX v3 is noted to be "beta exit" (aka: release candidate). If you want an RTM build now, pick up WiX v2. We're still working on WiX v3 RTM.

Comment by Dan Jagnow on Friday, April 03, 2009 7:25 PM

Rob and the rest of the WiX team, thanks so much for all the hard work you guys have been pouring into WiX for years now. I'm disappointed by this news, too. I've been banking on the integration with Visual Studio to boost the credibility of WiX within my organization (a big state agency) enough to get more teams to adopt it. Most of our installs right now are with VDPROJ, which makes me cringe. I love WiX personally, but it has been hard to get other developers to sign on to the maintenance effort of updating an XML file every time they add a new ASPX page with our WiX v2-based packages. They think a VDPROJ is good enough and requires little effort. I have been hoping that the RTM of v3 would be my opportunity to push the adoption. That will be harder now that it won't be partially integrated into Visual Studio. Still, I want you all to know that you're producing a great tool and your efforts are very much appreciated, even if we in the community don't often write in to say so. You guys have also given great support via the mailing lists on the few occasions when I have needed help (thanks, Bob Arnson!). I hope that Microsoft realizes what a great PR boost the WiX team gives them - worth a lot more than free food, IMHO. I'll keep coding. I know you guys are. :-)

Comment by Christopher Painter on Saturday, April 04, 2009 4:10 AM

Votive and DTF isn't in v2 so that really doesn't help me any. I wrote this 15 months ago and I'm still stuck in the same boat only now DTF is available so v2 is even less acceptable. http://blog.deploymentengineering.com/2008/01/wix-forced-to-use-beta-software.html We just gave an obscene amount of money to InstallShield. I really wish there was a way we could fund WiX to help move things along faster.

Comment by Immo Landwerth on Saturday, April 04, 2009 5:10 AM

Hi Rob, let me ask one question: why are there only volunteers working on Wix? I mean some other open source projects such as MEF or MVC have a full time product team behind it. Is that a personal decision or is there just not enough work-volume to justify a full time team. No offense, I am just curious.

Comment by Neil Sleightholm on Sunday, April 05, 2009 10:30 AM

I would like to add my disappointment at Microsoft's decision to drop WiX from Visual Studio 2010, it would have given WiX the "legitimacy" that some corporates seem to need. I think they have really missed an opportunity to get rid of the appalling vdproj setups - I'm sure a combination of WiX projects and Heat could have replaced it completely. I would also like to add my support for the volunteers that work on WiX, having this product has certainly helped with my deployment work. For me it would help if the releases weren't called betas - it would have been nicer to have lots of official release even though they have bugs - it wouldn't be the first product to be released with bugs!

Comment by Rob Mensching on Sunday, April 05, 2009 2:39 PM

@Dan, thanks, you know we are! :)

Comment by Rob Mensching on Sunday, April 05, 2009 2:43 PM

@Immo, there aren't just volunteers working on the WiX toolset. There are full time members of Visual Studio fixing bugs and adding features. WiX differs from MEF and ASP.NET MVC because the effort started as a volunteer project and VS joined later. You probably just hear me talk about the volunteers more because that's the side of the project that I "manage" most.

Comment by Rob Mensching on Sunday, April 05, 2009 2:50 PM

@Neil, I'm totally with you on the "legitimacy" thing. As for porting VSI on to WiX, well that was one of the *early* ideas for VS interaction with the WiX toolset but the amount of work necessary didn't fit in the time available. As I noted above, how the Visual Studio team chooses to interact with the WiX toolset going forward, is in their hands. I haven't heard their plan, yet.

Comment by Vaccano on Sunday, April 05, 2009 10:59 PM

While I am saddened by this news, I want to agree that is is a missed step forward, not a step backward and that that WIX will move forward without it. I learned about WIX at VSLive SF in Feb 09 and am now getting my company to adopt it. (I will be pitching it to management this month, but since the competing product cost $10,000 per license it will be a really easy sell.) As for a prod release of V3, from my point of view, take the time to get it right. Don't rush it just to get a release out that does not have high quality standards. That way WIX will continue to be a great solution rather than a product that is "kinda good if you can get past the bugs". It is a great tool and I really want to say thanks to those who dedicate their free time to volunteer and make it! You are all awesome!

Comment by Greg Brady on Wednesday, April 08, 2009 8:29 AM

Some of the commercial installer products aren't even an option for us. Visual Studio's current deployment options are way too limited. These conditions led me to Wix in the first place but I came to find it worked out well for us in all areas: cost, flexibility, and developer integration. A huge thank you from me to the Wix contributors. I imagine that there are thousands of companies like us that Wix would be a good fit for. Official support in Visual Studio would raise the profile of Wix, which would be great, but above all thank-you and keep up the great work.

Comment by Will on Tuesday, April 14, 2009 3:16 AM

Rob - I think you'll do well out of this in the long run. It's clear that VS, under the skilled management of Soma, is a slow-motion (and boy, do we mean slow) train wreck.

VS is already hopelessly over-coupled to everything around it - can't ship if SQL Server is late, can't fix the MSDN viewer because it's part of VS, VC dialog editing ruined by having to be like VB, can't ship the WPF-based editor until WPF fixes their broken text-rendering, etc, etc, etc.

The successful projects, which are capturing people's imagination at the moment, are the ones who have deliberately *not* hitched a ride on that particular tumbrel. Look at MVC or DLR/IronPython.

If excessive coupling is bad in software design, it's even worse in project management, and never is that clearer than VS.

Free of VS and it's over-thinking, over-meetinged, over-eating attitude, you can march to your own beat, and get a bit of excitement back into the project.

Your exchange with Christopher Painter higher up suggests you need to triage more aggressively - if you're not looking at crashing/data-loss, push those bugs out and go for a proper release. You're an installer compiler, not an enterprise filesystem.

Comment by Gavin Greig on Wednesday, August 19, 2009 3:08 AM

I'm coming late to this decision. I just wanted to echo what others are saying; you're doing a fantastic job. I share your disappointment that WiX won't be shipping in Visual Studio and think both that you deserved it and that installer development worldwide would have benefited from the boost in visibility and corporate credibility for WiX. However, as someone else also pointed out, this disappointing decision is a step forward not taken rather than a step back, and doesn't diminish what you've achieved.

After more than a decade of using one of the high cost but flaky alternatives, I was overjoyed to be able to switch to WiX. I have nothing but good things to say of it.

Comment by Vadim Rapp on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 8:50 AM

Maybe it's even for the better. I'm sure, you'll retain much more professional freedom being independent from VS. Besides, now that it has been announced that instead of WiX it will be Installshield, I bet, the movement towards WiX will double.

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