►
From YouTube: .NET Foundation Project Spotlight - Wix
Description
.NET Foundation Marketing Committee member Isaac Levin spoke to Rob Mensching, one the maintainers of WiX Toolset. For more detail, be sure to check out the Project Spotlight page
https://dotnetfoundation.org/projects/spotlight?project=WiX%20Toolset
A
B
Hi,
I'm
rob
minching,
I'm
the
best
dictator
of
the
wix
tool
set
by
night
by
day,
I'm
the
ceo
of
fire
giant,
which
is
a
company
that
provides
commercial
services
for
the
wix
tool
set.
So
I've
been
running
the
risk
toolset
for
since
I
created
1999,
and
now
I
run
a
company
on
the
as
well
to
grow
it
beyond
what
it
was
that
tiny
little
project
I
started
years
and
years
and
years
ago,.
A
B
Sure
so
the
the
core
premise
of
the
wix
tool
set
is
that
we
built
installation
packages
so
we're
very,
very
famous
for
the
msi
outputs
and
things
around
the
windows.
Installer
that
we've
built
for
years
and
years
and
the
core
of
focus
is
source
code
in
your
store
control
system
in
your
ci
system
built
the
same
way
you
build
all
of
your
other
source
code
forever
and
ever
with
all
the
same
kind
of
tools.
B
Text-Based
editors,
there's
computer
integration,
all
that
kind
of
stuff
and
the
output,
then,
instead
of
an
xe
or
a
dll,
is
an
installation
package
that
you
can
then
send
to
your
customers
with
all
that
other
stuff
you
built
in
your
ci
system.
So
that's
our
unique
claim
to
fame
is
integrating
into
that
seamlessly,
and
so
we
scale
from
really
really
really
tiny
projects
all
the
way
to
super
ginormous
projects
like
office.
A
That's
great,
I
I
think
for
the
intro
to
that.
One
of
the
things
that
I
immediately
thought
of
is
is
somebody
who
has
built
client
or
desktop
apps.
That
technology
has
changed
a
lot
over
the
last
few
years
and
I'd
like
to
know
kind
of
your
thoughts
on
on
what
the
mindset
is
when
the
the
concepts
of
publishing
and
packaging
client
applications
when
they
change
like
what
are
your
thoughts
around?
That.
B
A
B
I
want
one
of
the
oldest
in
this
space
and
the
way
that
we
think
about
the
windows
installer
at
this
point
is
it's
kind
of
the
anything
installer.
It's
the
industrial
frame
thing
that
can
install
anything.
It
has
all
of
the
expansion
points
that
you
might
need
to
be
able
to
get
your
software,
however
complicated
it
might
be.
Now,
on
the
other
end,
you
have
lots
of
other
choices
like
line
of
business.
B
The
wix
tool
set
at
fire
giant
we've
actually
done
work
to
extend
the
wix
tool
set
so
that
you
can
use
that
same
orth
code
view
you
might
have
used
to
build
your
msi
packages
forever,
at
whatever
scale
that
you
had.
You
can
take
that
exact
same
fourth
code
and
build
msix
packages.
So
it's
the
same
thing
as
hey.
I've
been
building
code
for
x86
forever,
and
now
I
want
to
build
for
arm
64..
B
B
A
A
One
of
the
things,
obviously,
is
this
concept
of
bringing
dotnet
to
all
sorts
of
different
clients
right.
You
know
I'd
like
to
know
from
your
standpoint
like
how
can
wix
help
net
developers
kind
of
encapsulate
that
story
across
different
platforms,
or
is
it
specifically,
you
know
great
stories
on
windows
and
for
other
targets.
You
know
there
might
be
some
better
options
for
you.
B
B
B
B
B
A
A
B
So
I
I
was
an
intern
at
microsoft
in
98
and
I
was
on
the
winners
dollar
team
when
it
was
being
built,
and
I
I
got
called
the
unofficial
tool
team.
So
at
the
intern
you
don't
get
to
work.
You
know
product
code
in
the
engine
itself,
but
hey,
there's
tons
of
tools
around
the
outside,
and
so
I
got
a
real
good
appreciation
for
the
things
that
developers
needed
to
build
installation
packages
and
that's
kind
of
where
I
operated.
B
A
B
B
So
the
original
thing
actually
predates.net.
It
wasn't
until
I
transferred
internally
microsoft
to
a
team
that
was
adopting
this
new
thing
called
the
dot-net
framework
1-0.
Actually
I
think
it's
1-1.
At
that
point
I
was
like
hey.
I
need
to
learn
this
new
technology.
Can
I
port
the
side
project
to
it
and
they're
like
sure?
Why
don't
you
take
a
couple
weeks
and
learn
steve
carp,
this
new
language,
and
so
I
took
my
vbscript
sprawling
huge
system
and
converted
it
to
steve
garp,
and
so
that
was
kind
of
my
process
of
microsoft.
A
B
B
I
want
to
try
to
get
the
outside
world
because
microsoft
started
doing
got.net
and
blogs,
and
things
like
that.
If
you
remember
those
days
and
I
found
a
set
of
people
they're
like
oh,
that
sounds
like
open
source,
I'm
like
yeah,
that's
kind
of
what
I'm
trying
to
do
gotten
the
right
set
of
people
by
april
2004.
A
That's
great,
I
one
of
the
things
that
I
think
that's
really
impactful
is
that
you
mentioned
that
you
know
it
was
microsoft's
first
open
source
project
right.
I
think
you
know
one
of
the
things
that's
great
about
open
source
projects
is
the
ability
for
community
contribution.
So
one
of
the
things
I'd
like
to
hear
from
you
is
is
how
does
the
community
embrace
and
help
give
back
to
the
wix
toolset.
B
So,
like
all
popular
open
source
projects,
we
have
no
problem
acquiring
bugs
from
the
community.
It's
a
very
large
system
and
people
are
happy
to
show
up
and
say:
hey.
This
doesn't
work
and
as
frustrating
as
that
can
be.
Sometimes
it's
also
very
good
to
have
the
space
getting
covered
with
people
that
are
volunteering
and
using
it's
like
that's
great.
A
B
B
Five
years,
probably
quite
a
while
doing
fantastic
work
in
there
as
well,
so
the
three
of
us
are
kind
of
the
core
maintainers
of
it
and
that
three
there's
generally
been
two
or
three
throughout
the
time
of
people
that
I've
always
leaned
on
someone
else
to
bounce
ideas
off
of
and
ideally
to
other
people
kind
of
break
ties,
but
just
to
get
enough
input
into
the
project.
So
there's
generally
been
two
or
three
people
at
the
top
of
the
project
making
decision.
B
B
B
We
do
triage
talk
about
the
project
he's
always
there
I'm
giving
his
input
from
the
outside,
and
you
know
a
number
of
other
people
that
contribute
around
the
outside
as
they
have
time
to
do
it,
but
predominantly
the
project
is
driven
by
bob
myself
and
john
moving
the
project
forward
and
then
lots
of
bugs
from
everybody
out
and
great
cheerleader
support
and
some
features
everyone
from
offering
people
around
too.
So
it's
it's
a
very
mature,
very
large
project,
so
there's
lots
of
bases,
but
it's
also
a
compiler
that
builds
software
inflation
packages.
B
A
I
I
imagine,
as
you
know,
a
very
large
open
source
project,
there's
always
going
to
be
people
that
want
to
contribute
the
old-fashioned
way
with
bugs
and
potentially
pull
requests
right.
You
mentioned
something
I
find
pretty
interesting
right
like
so
it
is,
it
isn't
a
space
that
might
be.
I
don't
want
to
call
it
niche,
but
it
might
be
a
bit
it
might.
A
It
might
be
interesting
for
people
to
join
in
they
might
not
have
a
ton
of
domain
knowledge
right,
but
what
you
know
from
your
perspective,
what
are
some
of
the
other
ways
that
people,
if
they,
you
know
they're
users
of
wix?
You
know
what
are
some
other
ways
that
they
can
help
contribute,
like
is
the
documentation
process.
Is
that
open
source
as
well.
B
B
We
could
always
use
more
contributions
than
that
and
in
wix
four
we're
actually
doing
a
lot
more
work
to
centralize
more
of
it.
It
was
kind
of
thread
out
a
couple
places.
We've
created
some
heartache
for
us,
we're
like.
Oh,
no,
not
that
place.
You
have
to
put
it
over
here
because
it
ends
up
flowing
through
the
system
that
is
really
hard
to
see,
especially
with
the
move
to
github
and
most
people
expecting
to
edit
the
exact
page
that
they
see
on
github.
A
B
In
wix
four,
so
that
people
hopefully
will
see
if
you
see
this
page,
this
is
the
page
you
actually
edit
and
set
a
pull
request
against
and
it
will
get
the
fix
in
which
hopefully
will
remove
that
point
of
friction.
The
also
I
people
that
get
in
those
tools
that
generally
like
I
need
to
do
an
installation
and
the
people
that
aren't
there
thinking.
Oh,
I
just
need
to
get
this
done
and
get
out
the
people
that
stick
around
are
like
you
know.
B
There
are
some
really
neat
problems
in
here
and
this
whole
base
of
declaratively,
stating
what
you
want,
the
future
to
look
like
and
then
having
the
system.
Take
you
from
point
a
to
point
b,
how
you
describe
that
and
then
we
have
the
problem.
Also
of
not
just.
I
want
to
describe
this
point
in
time
where
I
want
to
put
you
know
these
files
here
these
right
here
these
shortcuts.
B
Here
you
then
have
to
think
and
when
I
go
future,
I
need
to
change
that
to
this
point
and
then
sometimes
you
have
to
think
back
in
time
and
in
the
past
it
was
back
here
that
it
was
this
way
now.
How
do
I
transition
from
that
previous
world
to
the
new
world,
and
then
how
do
I
get
myself
to
the
next
world
and
this
declarative
state
transition
when
you
get
into
the
space
and
sit
around
for
a
while,
you'd
be
like
wow
there's
a
lot
of
really
fascinating
problems
that
are
more
than
just.
B
One
person's
computer
to
another
person's
or
many
people's
computer,
so
we
get
people
that
drop
in
for
a
while.
We
try
to
get
them
interested
in
the
declarative
nature
of
it,
because
that's
that's
one
of
the
things
that
we
believe
in
is
the
declarative
nature,
as
opposed
to
writing
copy
this
file.
Here,
you
state.
B
I
want
this
file
here
and
you
let
the
engines
move
it
there
and
then,
of
course,
we
have
a
whole
compilot
system
that
it's
modeled
after
at
this
point,
wix4
we've
done
a
lot
of
work
digging
into
compilers
like
roslyn
and
llvm,
and
taking
the
declarative
compiler
that
we
had,
which
is
a
little
weird
when
you
think
about
it.
You
know
we're
not
writing
procedural
code
or
assembly
instructions,
we're
writing
declarative
packaging,
but
we
do
it.
B
Of
course,
into
how
they've
worked
and
improving
the
internal
workings
of
the
wix
tool
set
to
make
it
so
for
anybody's
kind
of
halfway
through
the
compilers
we
have
a
very
approachable
compiler,
that's
not
so
complicated
sitting
on
assembly.
Our
outputs
are
very
easy
to
see
and
tools
that
you
can
take
apart,
where
I
guess
you
have
disassemblers,
but
that's
always
felt
really
low
level
to
me.
So
as
a
compiler
project,
it's
got
a
lot
of
interesting
stuff
in
it
too,
for
people
that
want
to
do
that.
B
B
In
that,
but
we've
had
success.
I
mean,
like
I
said,
I'm
on
the
fourth
generation
of
people
that
have
joined
you
know
and
then
left
for
various
reasons.
Usually
they
got
married,
they
a
lot
of
guys,
bailed
on
me,
but
now
you
know
we're
rolling
along
doing
great,
and
I,
who
knows
what
the
next
generation
will
look
like,
although
I
hope
bob
is
going
to
stick
around
for
a
long
time,
because
we're
working
real
well
together.
B
A
B
So
we
have
the
wix
toolset.org,
which
is
our
kind
of
landing
page
that
has
all
the
introductions
and
all
the
tools
that
you
can
get
started
there
we
have
and
on
there
are
then
links
to
mailing
lists.
You
can
send
mail
to
the
mailing
list,
we're
doing
experimentation
with
the
github
discussion
and
those
are
relatively
new,
we'll
see
how
well
that
works
for
us,
but
the
mailing
list.
You
can
go
and
drop
in
and
ask
questions,
and
so
I
think
a
lot
of
it's
like
getting
in
and
playing
on
the
website.
B
B
Getting
started
is
fairly
straightforward
and
that's
just
kind
of
where
you
get
go
play
and
then,
if
you
find
it
interesting,
then
you
know
jump
on
the
mailing
list.
If
you
want
to
kind
of
get
more
involved,
but
just
using
it,
we
have
millions
and
millions
of
developers
downloads
that
people
are
just
using
it.
So
chances
are
you've.
Had
a
larger
system,
you've
probably
seen
the
withdrawal
that's
floating
around
in
in
your
organization
somewhere.
It's
out
there
a
lot.
B
A
Great
and
again
rob
I
want
to
thank
you
so
much
for
you
know
hopping
on
project
spotlight
and
talking
a
little
bit
about
wix
and
letting
your
passion
shine
through
about
you
know
being
able
to
empower
dynamic
developers
to
be
able
to
be
more
effective.
So
I
want
to
thank
you
again
for
your
time
for
folks
that
are
interested
to
learn
more
about
wix.
Like
rob
said
there
on
github,
the
project
spotlight
page
will
have
links
to
all
of
the
relevant
materials.
So
for
that
rob
want
to
thank
you
so
much.
B
A
I
would
like
to
say
not
an
old
project
you're,
a
wise
project,
because
you've
seen
the
entire
evolution
of
what
dot
net
has
gone
from.
You
know,
like
you,
said
from
you,
know,
1.01.1
and
now
you're
talking
about.net
6..
So
that's
great
to
hear-
and
you
know
I
think,
projects
that
have
seen
the
entire
net
ecosystem
all
the
way
through,
like
there's,
definitely
a
lot
of
great
stories
to
tell
so
again.
Thank
you
so
much.