Doctor Deploys Blog

Back on September 1st, I answered the question When will Windows Installer 4.5 be RTM-ed? with Q1 of 2008.  Turns out that date was too optimistic.  Q2 of 2008 now looks more realistic but, given the first optimistic mistake and in an abundance of caution to avoid compounding the first mistake, let’s call just it Q2-ish. 

For those of you wondering what happened, we’ve had a number of unexpected setbacks that required we either 1) cut features 2) reduce quality efforts, or 3) take more time.  Taking more time is the best option available.  We had believed until just recently that we could make the date but our best intentions did not hold up.

For those of you that also ship software for a living, the story of this slip may be familiar.  Our chief mistakes were inadequately allocating time for a) unfilled positions, b) responding to user and partner feedback, and c) crossteam dependency execution.  Through the cycle we saw these in small increments but it wasn’t until the entry point for our Q1 glide path was missed that we realized the small increments were compounding.

As of the end of November, we’re hard at working down our backlog of knowns.  My reluctance to “set” a new date is because I’m not sure we’ve accounted for enough of the unknowns.  ‘Once bitten, twice shy’ as the old saying goes. ;^) 

We’ll have another project status update before the end of Q1 2008. 

Original post by Windows Installer Team

As I noted about four weeks ago, WiX v3 is being moved to the .NET Framework 2.0. I originally hoped it would only take two or three nights of work to complete. Unfortunately, I was sick late last week and bailed out early so it took more like four nights of actual work. In any case, I think I finished the work tonight and just want to do a couple more test before I submit the code. Next week’s release of the WiX toolset should now require the .NET Framework 2.0 as a minimum.

Many thanks to Bob for his help and suggestions as I worked through all the porting issues.

I’ll now take a few minutes to answer some of the questions that I was asked about what this really means.

Q: What does it mean to have the WiX toolset moved to the .NET Framework 2.0?

A: Simply put, the WiX v3 toolset will now require that you have the .NET Framework 2.0 installed for it to run. WiX v2 toolset will still run on the .NET Framework 1.1 SP1 or .NET Framework 2.0.

Q: So if I only have the .NET Framework 1.1 SP1 installed then WiX v3 toolset won’t work?

A: That is correct. You need to install the .NET Framework 2.0 (or 3.0 or 3.5) for WiX v3 to work. The .NET Framework 2.0 is extremely popular so we are not expecting this to be an issue. Note that ClickThrough and Votive in WiX v3 already required .NET Framework 2.0 and that has never been raised as an issue.

Q: What benefits are there for moving to the .NET Framework 2.0?

A: Well, people will quit asking me when we were going to move it. Honestly, IMHO, that’s the biggest advantage right now. Technically, we can also start to take advantage of generic collections and the improved XML objects in the .NET Framework 2.0. I’m not keen on converting our working typed collections to generics but I’ve heard there are some performance enhancements in the new XML objects so we’ll probably look into that.

Q: Wow, was it worth four weeks of work?

A: I don’t know. If it saves me constantly explaining why WiX was designed for .NET Framework 1.1 then maybe it was. <smile/>

Q: But, MSBuild is cool. Can’t you use MSBuild to build everything now?

A: The MSBuild syntax is a little weird but it does handle managed code and WiX code (thanks to Justin) well and integrates very well into Visual Studio. Unfortunately, we still need NAnt to build the native (C++) portions of the code base because the C/C++ project support in MSBuild is dismal. The solution that I’ve settled on is to basically use NAnt to build all of our native code first (Custom Actions, mostly) then NAnt calls out to MSBuild to build the managed code (core toolset, Votive, ClickThrough).

 

Original post by Rob Mensching

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while but just never got around to it. A few months ago I extended the implementation in WiX to allow foreach loops using any variable over any given set of values. Previously it was limited to only those variables that were defined in your preprocessor extension.

While this example wont do much for you, it demonstrates what a foreach loop will do. <?foreach?> loops can simplify authoring in many ways, especially for complex products.

Example:

<?foreach number in 1;2;3 ?>
    <Property Id=”Property$(var.number)” Value=”value$(var.number) />
<?endforeach ?>

Will result in the following being passed to the compiler:

    <Property Id=”Property1″ Value=”value1 />
    <Property Id=”Property2″ Value=”value2 />
    <Property Id=”Property3″ Value=”value3 />

I want to note as a caveat, It can be very easy to break component rules by changing the contents of a component by simply changing the values you iterate over. I recommend not using foreach loops anywhere near components unless you have really thought it through.  Also, while using the preprocessor can be very handy for minimizing the amount of wix code you need to maintain, it can really confuse some of the tools that are out there that help you generate or maintain your wix source. In general, think about other options before you use the preprocessor as a solution but if you think its your best option, enjoy

Original post by Petermarcu

Tonight Jenny was breaking out the holiday decorations and wanted to listen to Christmas carols on the “radio”. The “radio” in this case is an Hauppauge WinTV-PVR with FM tuner in the computer in our living room. Unfortunately, the radio quit working when I upgraded the machine from one of the Vista Ultimate release candidates to the final bits (downloaded and installed from Windows Marketplace).

I remember trying to quickly fix the problem a while ago and giving up because nothing obvious jumped out to me. Tonight I was prepared to figure out how to fix the “No Services Found” error message for the FM Radio in our Windows Media Center on Windows Vista Ultimate. Naively I thought that those words typed into a search query would bring back the step by step manual to fix the “radio”.

It took a lot of digging but eventually I found a link to this support page at HP. That put me on to the following steps that I fixed the “radio” for me.

1. Click the Vista “pearl” (formerly the “Start” button).

2. Search for “services.msc”. You should see a program show up with little gear icons next to it. 

3.  Click the “services” program and click “Continue” on the User Account Control prompt.

4.  The “Services” management console will come up and you will see a list of tons of services on your machine.

5. Scroll down the list until you find “Windows Media Center Receiver Service” in the Name column. You may need to expand the Name column since the name is long and there are four or so services that start with the name “Windows Media Center …”.

6. Double click on the “Windows Media Center Receiver Service” name.

7. You’ll be presented with a dialog with multiple tabs titled “Windows Media Center Receiver Service Properties (Local Computer)”.

8. Click on the “Log On” tab at the top.

9. At the top of the “Log On” tab, you will see two radio buttons. The first says “Local System account”. Make sure that radio button is checked. If it is already checked then these set of steps probably won’t help you. In my case, the “This account:” radio button was checked and “Network Service” was present.

10. After setting the Log On radio button to “Local System account”, click “OK”.

11. At this point you can restart your computer and try Windows Media Center again. If you are sure that Windows Media Center is closed then you can take a short cut by click the “Restart Service” button at the top of the “Services” management console.

12. Go back into Windows Media Center and “No Services Found” should be replaced by the FM Radio icon. When I clicked on it the first time, Media Center told me I had to configure the TV tuner which took no time and suddenly I was grooving to The Vortex on C89.5 again.

Of course, by the time I got everything working, Jenny had gone to sleep.

 

Original post by Rob Mensching