[bobince]

Yeah it's a thin layer over MSI tables, so if you don't already know how Windows Installer works then it's not at all clear how to do many seemingly-basic installer tasks. And few people really know how Windows Installer works because that is itself obscure, poorly designed and documented.

But a thin layer over MSI is actually what you want; the commercial tools that preceded WiX and tried to abstract away what Windows Installer was actually doing were much worse. Because Windows Installer is such a mess of counterintuitive design and bugs that you are going to need to debug it.

WiX is to be saluted for greatly reducing the level of misery involved in making installers for Windows. But the level of misery is still very high indeed.

[RajT88]

Agree. Learning windows installer is bananas because it is super unintuitive.

Intentionally so in parts, because they do not want you to interact with it outside the API.

Example: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/msi/msifileh...

You could be forgiven for not catching on that this table is just using slightly obfuscated MD5 hashes.