The best way track such progress is to open a bug.
Remember, the WiX toolset is an Open Source project. That means people tend
to fix the issues that they find important and/or interesting to work on.
After opening a bug you either have to wait for a volunteer or you could
work to fix it yourself. Volunteers coordinate WiX toolset development work
on the wix-devs mailing list.
For example, I personally don't work with Merge Modules any longer. I find
Burn and chaining to be much more interesting and important to improve.
Thus, I'm not someone who is likely going to volunteer to fix such an issue
until the more important issues in Burn are addressed.
Note: if you're paying someone to support your use of the WiX toolset, then
you should contact them about addressing this bug.
On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 7:17 AM, Rennie Petersen <r...@merlinia.com> wrote:
> I haven’t been keeping track, so I wonder if someone could tell me if
> this has been resolved, and if so in which version/build of WiX?****
>
> ** **
>
> Or if I should just accept the situation and continue to use my home-made
> modification of the wix2010.targets file?****
>
> ** **
>
> Thanks,****
>
> Rennie****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* Rob Mensching [mailto:r...@robmensching.com]
> *Sent:* 19. marts 2013 17:51
>
> *To:* Windows Installer XML toolset developer mailing list
> *Subject:* Re: [WiX-devs] Project with merge modules defeating
> incremental build facility****
>
> ** **
>
> Blair, I'm pretty sure that would change *everything*. I still believe the
> fix is going to require someone to go in and fix the contents files so they
> don't end up refering to files that mergemod.dll is going to extract to
> random directories. <smile/>****
>
> ** **
>
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 12:37 PM, Blair Murri <os...@live.com> wrote:****
>
> Conceptually the following is a good way to view the Binder (it is
> somewhat simplified, so the usual caveats apply): in the WiX toolset
> the "native" file formats are all based on XML (with a small smattering of
> ZIP) but the final output files are mostly not that format. So the Binder
> is the component the Linker uses to write the non-WiX-native files (like
> MSI, MST, EXE (in the case of Burn), etc.). It's called the binder because
> it takes not just the output of the Linker but also all the files
> referenced by the linker and "binds" them into the final output file(s).
>
> What is happening here is that the Binder emits a file indicating all of
> those referenced files (since if any of them changed you need a re-link (or
> at minimum a rebind) to incorporate those changed files into the output
> file. To enable correct incremental linking MSBuild needs to have a list of
> the files that were incorporated by the binder into the output file.
> However, some of those files may not exist after the linker is done (if
> that portion of the temp folder was cleaned, for instance) and if MSBuild
> can't find them it assumes that a rebuild is needed. So resetting
> timestamps will do nothing for this issue.
>
> Devs: would moving @(_BindBuiltOutputs) from Outputs to Inputs fix this
> issue? Or would it introduce some other subtle error?
>
> -Blair ****
> ------------------------------
>
> From: r...@merlinia.com
> To: wix-devs@lists.sourceforge.net
> Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:05:05 +0000****
>
>
> Subject: Re: [WiX-devs] Project with merge modules defeating incremental
> build facility****
>
> Yes, well, I'm sure you're right. I don't even know what the "Binder" is.*
> ***
>
> ****
>
> All I know is that when I started researching this, what I could see in
> the MSBuild logs that marked the turning point of whether MSBuild ran the
> Link task or not was a message where it said "All output files are up to
> date" in the cases where it didn't run Link. And as far as I know MSBuild
> does not keep track of whether there have been changes in the collection of
> files from one build to the next, it just blindly compares timestamps on
> the current input files vs. the current output files.****
>
> ****
>
> Yours,****
>
> Rennie****
>
> ****
>
> *From:* Rob Mensching [mailto:r...@robmensching.com]
> *Sent:* 14. marts 2013 18.32
> *To:* Windows Installer XML toolset developer mailing list
> *Subject:* Re: [WiX-devs] Project with merge modules defeating
> incremental build facility****
>
> ****
>
> It's not a timestamp issue. The file paths change everytime so there are
> always a set of files that were removed and a set of files that were added.
> Even if the timestamps were correct (they may be) the add/remove makes it
> look like a lot of changes. So, the Binder would need to taught to
> recoginize the files from Merge Modules much as I described above.****
>
> ****
>
> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 9:53 AM, Rennie Petersen <r...@merlinia.com> wrote:*
> ***
>
> I'm not sure I understand - I had assumed that the BindContentsFileList
> was a list created by WiX as part of the build. ****
>
> ****
>
> Anyway, it is correct that the three temporary files get different names
> on every build. I've attached some of them for your viewing pleasure.****
>
> ****
>
> I'm still thinking that the way to fix this is to set the timestamps on
> those temporary files to equal the timestamp on the merge module file, but
> what do I know?****
>
> ****
>
> Yours,****
>
> Rennie****
>
> ****
>
> ****
>
> *From:* Rob Mensching [mailto:r...@robmensching.com]
> *Sent:* 14. marts 2013 15.55
> *To:* Windows Installer XML toolset developer mailing list
> *Subject:* Re: [WiX-devs] Project with merge modules defeating
> incremental build facility****
>
> ****
>
> My bet is that the mergemod.dll is extracting the contained files to a
> random temp location. Thus every time the Merge Module is merged, the
> BindContentsFileList gets a different set of file names and thinks things
> are out of date. If you could confirm that, that'd be awesome.****
>
> ****
>
> If my guess is correct, the fix is to probably to add the paths to the
> merge modules to the BindContentsFileList *instead of* the files in the
> merge modules.****
>
> ****
>
> On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 12:11 PM, Rennie Petersen <r...@merlinia.com> wrote:
> ****
>
> > This conversation is better for wix-devs,****
>
> ****
>
> OK.****
>
> ****
>
> > short answer: no WiX does not create those files. The mergemod.dll from
> the MSI SDK creates those files ****
>
> Hmm, but WiX must get the filenames of the three files since they end up
> on the projectName.BindContentsFileListextension.txt list of files.****
>
> ****
>
> So again, what you should do with those three temporary files is to set
> their timestamp to the timestamp of the merge module file. That should
> solve the problem.****
>
> ****
>
> Yours,****
>
> Rennie****
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Everyone hates slow websites. So do we.
> Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics
> Download AppDynamics Lite for free today:
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_mar
> _______________________________________________
> WiX-devs mailing list
> WiX-devs@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-devs****
>
> ****
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Everyone hates slow websites. So do we.
> Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics
> Download AppDynamics Lite for free today:
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_mar
> _______________________________________________
> WiX-devs mailing list
> WiX-devs@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-devs****
>
> ****
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with
> AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today:
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_mar
> _______________________________________________ WiX-devs mailing list
> WiX-devs@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-devs****
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Everyone hates slow websites. So do we.
> Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics
> Download AppDynamics Lite for free today:
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_mar
> _______________________________________________
> WiX-devs mailing list
> WiX-devs@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-devs****
>
> ** **
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.net email is sponsored by Windows:
>
> Build for Windows Store.
>
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/windows-dev2dev
> _______________________________________________
> WiX-devs mailing list
> WiX-devs@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-devs
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by Windows:
Build for Windows Store.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/windows-dev2dev
_______________________________________________
WiX-devs mailing list
WiX-devs@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-devs
