What are limitations of WiX and WiX Toolset?
wix
Solution
It's easiest for me to answer this question in terms of what is WiX missing that InstallShield has ( feature gap ).
- Bootstrapper/Chainer - WiX has a bootstrapper called Burn which is now included in WiX v3.6.
- XML Read - WiX only has CA's for writing not reading ( AppSearch ) XML files
- Text Search / Replace - InstallShield has patterns for reading/writing non INI/XML files
- MSSQL Only - No support for Oracle and MySQL
- Automation Interface - No DOM for programatically updating/generating projects. Have to do it all with raw XML.
- No Native IIS 7 support - Native IIS7 support is present from WiX v3.5
- Mostly Text Only toolset. No GUI Designers for heavy lifting ( see IsWiX ). XML is concise and has it's place but it's like comparing Notepad to Blend.
I've used heat to extract COM fairly successfully so that's no longer a concern to me.
Problem
I have been unsuccessfully trying to find an article or post listing functional limitations of WiX (Windows Installer XML)/WiX Toolset. After using WiX for a couple of weeks, I can think of at least two limitations in the most recent RTM version (v3.0): - WiX Toolset cannot make a bootstrapper (setup.exe). - WiX Toolset cannot retrieve COM registration info from a COM executable. Can you think of other limitations? Something you ran into while working on a deployment project? I think this info could be handy for people who learn WiX.