Azure DevOps Hosted Build Server Breaking Changes

[chrpai]

Just a heads up.... I have a long time customer who was on WiX 3.11 building on an Azure DevOps server. Microsoft updated WiX to 3.14 and who knows what else and they broke ICE validation. His build was suddenly getting:

  C:\Program Files (x86)\WiX Toolset v3.14\bin\Light.exe -out D:\a\9\s\Installer\REDACTED\REDACTEDMM\bin\Release\REDACTEDMM.msm -pdbout D:\a\9\s\Installer\REDACTED\REDACTEDMM\bin\Release\REDACTEDMM.wixpdb -cultures:null -contentsfile obj\Release\REDACTEDMM.wixproj.BindContentsFileListnull.txt -outputsfile obj\Release\REDACTEDMM.wixproj.BindOutputsFileListnull.txt -builtoutputsfile obj\Release\REDACTEDMM.wixproj.BindBuiltOutputsFileListnull.txt -wixprojectfile D:\a\9\s\Installer\REDACTED\REDACTEDMM\REDACTEDMM.wixproj obj\Release\REDACTEDMM.wixobj obj\Release\REDACTEDMMcustom.wixobj
##[error]light.exe(0,0): Error LGHT0217: Error executing ICE action 'ICE103'. The most common cause of this kind of ICE failure is an incorrectly registered scripting engine. See http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/error217/ for details and how to solve this problem. The following string format was not expected by the external UI message logger: "There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A DLL required for this install to complete could not be run. Contact your support personnel or package vendor.  ".

I do not get validation errors locally. Disabling validation gets Azure DevOps past this error but then I get:

  C:\Program Files (x86)\WiX Toolset v3.14\bin\Light.exe -out D:\a\9\s\Installer\REDACTED\REDACTEDBootstrapper\bin\Release\REDACTED.exe -pdbout D:\a\9\s\Installer\REDACTED\REDACTEDBootstrapper\bin\Release\REDACTED.wixpdb -ext "C:\Program Files (x86)\WiX Toolset v3.14\bin\\WixUtilExtension.dll" -ext "C:\Program Files (x86)\WiX Toolset v3.14\bin\\WixNetFxExtension.dll" -ext "C:\Program Files (x86)\WiX Toolset v3.14\bin\\WixBalExtension.dll" -contentsfile obj\Release\REDACTEDBootstrapper.wixproj.BindContentsFileList.txt -outputsfile obj\Release\REDACTEDBootstrapper.wixproj.BindOutputsFileList.txt -builtoutputsfile obj\Release\REDACTEDBootstrapper.wixproj.BindBuiltOutputsFileList.txt -wixprojectfile D:\a\9\s\Installer\REDACTED\REDACTEDBootstrapper\REDACTEDBootstrapper.wixproj obj\Release\pth2D33F127540E5920F4EC89507F4C872E\Bundle.wixobj
##[error]Installer\REDACTED\REDACTEDBootstrapper\Code\Bundle.wxs(12,0): Error LGHT0094: Unresolved reference to symbol 'ChainPackageGroup:NetFx40ClientRedist' in section 'Bundle:REDACTED'.

This one is a bit of surprise. Does the PackageGroup NetFx40ClientRedist no longer exist in 3.14? I searched issues and only found #3738 and #3625. This doesn't seem to be an Azure DevOps issue as the moment I update WiX from 3.11.2 to 3.14 on my development box the error occurs. I tried a few others such as NetFx40ClientWeb and NetFx45Web and they can't be resolved either.

[chrpai]

I created #8062.

[chrpai]

actions/runner-images#9543

[chrpai]

Upon further review I've seen that the ICE error occurs locally also. Both of these issues seem to be with WiX 3.14. I've created #8065