Building MSI: Invalid Product Version

I’m trying out Clowd.Squirrel and I’m hitting an issue with Wix when trying to create an MSI package. It does not like my rather large version numbers that represent build dates.

The exact same issue was previously reported to Squirrel.Windows as Squirrel/Squirrel.Windows#916 and solved in PR Squirrel/Squirrel.Windows#1023

Here’s what the error output looks like:

[INFO] Program: Compiling machine-wide msi deployment tool in 64-bit mode

[ERRO] System.AggregateException: One or more errors occurred. (Failed to compile WiX template, command invoked was: 'candle.exe -nologo -ext WixNetFxExtension -out C:\code\projects\myapp\artifacts\Publish\MyAppSetup.wixobj C:\code\projects\myapp\artifacts\Publish\MyAppSetup.wxs'

Output was:
MyAppSetup.wxs
C:\code\projects\myapp\artifacts\Publish\MyAppSetup.wxs(3) : error CNDL0242 : Invalid product version '1.8238.33358.0'. Product version must have a major version less than 256, a minor version less than 256, and a build version less than 65536.)
 ---> System.Exception: Failed to compile WiX template, command invoked was: 'candle.exe -nologo -ext WixNetFxExtension -out C:\code\projects\myapp\artifacts\Publish\MyAppSetup.wixobj C:\code\projects\myapp\artifacts\Publish\MyAppSetup.wxs'

Output was:
MyAppSetup.wxs
C:\code\projects\myapp\artifacts\Publish\MyAppSetup.wxs(3) : error CNDL0242 : Invalid product version '1.8238.33358.0'. Product version must have a major version less than 256, a minor version less than 256, and a build version less than 65536.
   at Squirrel.HelperExe.CompileWixTemplateToMsi(String wxsTarget, String outputFile) in ./Internal/HelperExe.cs:line 101
   at SquirrelCli.Program.createMsiPackage(String setupExe, IPackage package, Boolean packageAs64Bit) in ./Program.cs:line 439
   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
   at SquirrelCli.Program.Releasify(ReleasifyOptions options)
   at SquirrelCli.CommandAction`1.Execute(IEnumerable`1 args) in ./ValidatedOptionSet.cs:line 168
   at SquirrelCli.Program.Main(String[] args) in ./Program.cs:line 87

I understand that you might not want to change this now that you are working on a complete rewrite but I thought I’d report it anyway.

[caesay]

I think if you drop a template.wxs file in the current working directory Squirrel should find it instead of the included one but I’ve not tested this.

[DavidZidar]

I won’t be changing my perfectly good version numbers just because of MSI. 😄 That said I agree with your reasoning.

Is there a way to provide a path to an alternate wsx-file that I’m missing? Editing the file under .nuget/packages is a no go. I suppose I could just call candle myself though.