> IIRC it was a project under the Office organization originally.

I worked in Office in 1999 when I created WiX but it definitely was not an "Office project". It wasn't until I left Office for project in Windows Server that Office adopted the WiX Toolset (to replace their custom system). The interaction with Office was always interesting.

> I've got a feeling Microsoft doesn't want to support it anymore because they see it as completely legacy today.

I think that's probably fair. The problem is that nobody has created an installation technology that is as fully featured as the Windows Installer. There are a lot of warts to the Windows Installer. It was designed to support floppy disks for goodness sake, but they were the last team IMHO that took the installation problem seriously. That's why MSI hasn't been replaced in 25 years.

> WiX toolkit is just a reflection of the complex legacy of the old terrible MSI output format.

Our primary goal with the WiX Toolset was to provide access to the full power of the Windows Installer. Given the adoption by extremely large software projects, I think we've done pretty well toward that goal. We're slowly turning our attention to simplifying the toolset to make it easier to use for simpler projects. But that's only been a focus for the last couple of years, so not a lot has come about, yet. But the Files element is a huge upgrade.

I appreciate the primary source corrections and expansions!