WiX is a thin wrapper around MSI (which sucks beyond belief) and as such it suffers full blast from all the "design" decisions of the latter, not even trying to remedy the situation.
I really could pour out a full-blown rant on MSI in general and WiX in particular, but that would be wildly offtopic and of no interest to fellow HNers.
If you think MSI is bad, and I'll have to take your word for it, what MS had prior to it was probably worse. Writing installers for Windows using MS tools has always been a nightmare.
WiX is a thin wrapper around MSI (which sucks beyond belief) and as such it suffers full blast from all the "design" decisions of the latter, not even trying to remedy the situation.
I really could pour out a full-blown rant on MSI in general and WiX in particular, but that would be wildly offtopic and of no interest to fellow HNers.