WiX installer and Error 2708 (No entries found in the file table)

I had to add different versions of a file to my installer today. Seemed easy enough to do - the files were available in the right places and everything, so I added a version number on to the old file ID, added a new file with the new version number, and called it a day, right?

Not so fast. Compile up the install and run it:

Error 2708: No entries found in the file table.

Say what? Must have been a file system glitch. Open up the MSI with Orca and check the file table; well, yes, it has lots of entries, no trouble there. What's going on here?

Buried deep in the search results for the error code I found this page. The comment from Jane D pointed out that she'd seen this error while having problems with the Duplicate File table rather than the File table - and that jogged my memory. In a separate component I had a CopyFile element that was pointing to my file, and it still had the old file ID reference, now orphaned. Update the reference, recompile, and bingo. Working install.

I see this as a bug in the WiX linker: why did it build the MSI with this unresolved reference? I'll have to post something to the mailing list at some point.

Building a cathedral

A traveler visited a city where many stone cutters were working. Approaching several, he asked the same question: "What are you doing?" The first stonecutter he met replied, "I'm cutting stone. It's dull work, but it pays the bills." A second stonecutter responded, "I'm the best stone cutter in the land. Look at the smoothness of this stone, how perfect the edges are." A third pointed to a foundation several yards away, and said, "I'm building a cathedral."

Thanks to Grady Booch and Joe Marasco for the story!

The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing

Joel's latest article on interviewing is up. It makes some good points, although he continues with the down-to-the-metal idiosyncracy that I posted about last year. But here are the things that I thought were really good points:

• Hire/No-Hire . Make a decision. If you don't know, the answer is No Hire. I've run into this before when interviewing an entry-level guy for a position that required more skills than that. We recommended he be hired for Support instead. I'm not sure that that wasn't the right decision, but as a principle I like this one.
• You want people who are smart, and who get things done. Joel describes people who fail at one or the other, and I think I've worked with most of them before.
• A programmer should understand pointers, and recursion. Joel comments that a lot of people are coming out of school without learning a language that requires pointers, which is a problem. Less so with recursion. He says that pointers are an aptitude rather than a skill.

At the end he says, confidently,

If your resume and phone-screening process is working, you’ll probably have about 20% hires in the live interview.

True at FogBugz, no doubt. I've not really seen it here in Indianapolis, where the local talent pool is so small. But you never know, we might get lucky!

Want a job at an up-and-coming medical imaging company? Drop me a line!