Visual Studio 2013 Wix 3.7 automated build

Question

Our company is going to automate installer creation. We use Visual Studio Online for builds, and Visual Studio 2013 Pro for development. We are going to use WIX 2.8 because it is compatible with VS2013.

I have two questions:

1. In "Hosted build controller" article (http://www.visualstudio.com/get-started/hosted-build-controller-vs) in section "Software on the hosted build server" we see that "WIX Toolset 3.7" is preinstalled in Hosted Build Controller. However in another article "TFS Service - Software on the hosted build server" (http://listofsoftwareontfshostedbuildserver.azurewebsites.net/) I see no one WIX Toolset. Please tell where I may find what software is installed on Hosted Build Controller?

2. Why Microsoft Azure (we love it very much) on Hosted Build Controller doesn't have the latest WIX Toolset 3.9. There is no official NUGETs for WIX Toolset 3.9. I understand that it may be question to WIX team that, maybe, is not part of Microsoft. But if Azure team included WIX 3.7 to Hosted Build Controller then why they don't update it?

   Please help me because I don't know what to do: either use WIX 3.7 and expect that it is installed on Hosted Build Controller or user "WiX Toolset (unofficial) 3.9.1006"?

Answer 1

I use VSO but not the hosted build controller. It's a very neat concept but stops working the moment you don't fit in the box. For me it's the lack of InstallShield compilers despite the fact that Microsoft pushes InstallShield Limited Edition. For WiX the problem is that you have to disable ICE vadidation as the tests fail in their locked down environment. Then there is the boring delay in spinning up a build agent when you request the build. Finally you can't drop the build on a local file server so you always have to click through to the website and wait for your build to queue up for download. ZZZZZZZZZZZ

WiX 3.8 vs 3.9 won't matter as the targets file is the same.

So it's a neat concept but not quiet there. My desktop at home is a Core i7-2600K with 32GB of RAM, 128GB SSD boot and 4 300GB 10K WD velociraptors running RAID 0. I'm running Windows 8.1 with Hyper-V enabled and have a VM that runs 24 hours a day to be my build agent. I have full control over the build environment and the build gets copied to my local BUILD_ARCHIVES share.

The Hyper-V also hosts various dev and test environments as well.