The WiX toolset meets the MSI 4.0 feature set.

Today the Windows Installer PM team met with a few members of the WiX Virtual Team to talk about the upcoming features in MSI 4.0. Actually, the WiX toolset was represented by just Bob (who isn't in that picture) and me. The others were probably all busy doing real work.

Anyway, the Windows Installer PMs spent the first part of the month traveling to the major installation vendors like InstallShield and Wise to talk about the new features in the Windows Installer. Apparently, the WiX toolset's adoption inside of Microsoft and outside of Microsoft rated us a quick meeting... or maybe it's just that my office isn't a far walk. <smile/>

At the meeting, there wasn't really much to discuss. Those of us that work on the WiX toolset follow the Windows Installer blog very closely. In particular, this blog entry summed up the new authoring information necessary for MSI 4.0. That blog entry plus the Windows Installer Channel9 video cover the topics pretty well. Thus Bob and I didn't have many questions today.

Ultimately, it looks like we do have all of the information necessary to add MSI 4.0 support to the WiX toolset. I expect Derek or I will get to that next week. Finally, I think that will also be a great time to push another release to SourceForge.

Comments

• Anonymous
  November 30, 2005
  Will MSI 4.0 also support a transparent checkbox control? That's the only feature I'm really waiting for :-)
• Anonymous
  December 01, 2005
  Sadly, no. I haven't seen any real improvements to the UI handling in MSI 4.0. There may have been some minor bug fixes but nothing about being able to layer checkboxes on bitmaps (and have it look right).