John Vottero wrote:
The System.Configuration.Installer base class has virtual methods for Install, Uninstall, Commit and Rollback. Doesn't that mean that that it can support Rollbacks?
Yes, they *can*. The number that do is vanishingly small. Doing it right
is hard, regardless of language. Half the time, they're not even close
to necessary: The event log stuff in InstallUtil, for example, just
writes registry keys. So you have CAs and managed CAs when a few rows in
the Registry table get it for free.
I don't know enough about Windows Installer to understand all the implications of managed
CAs. What I do know is that there are many groups at Microsoft that are creating managed
CAs to support their products and they aren't creating unmanaged CAs and they aren't
documenting what their managed CAs actually do so ISV's are left stuck in the middle. We
have to reverse engineer the Microsoft managed CAs so we can develop "proper"
installers.
The situation is clearly broken and it's up to Microsoft to fix it.
Yes and in addition to Rob's suggestion of pinging the MSI team, I'll
add: Ping the teams whose stuff you use. Let them know that blindly
calling managed code via InstallUtil isn't good enough for you. Teams
like the black-box approach because it gives them future flexibility
(over, say, documenting the registry entries their IntallUtil CAs
write). Tough. Let them know it. Document the stuff and WiX can handle
them via extensions and, when necessary, CAs.
--
sig://boB
http://bobs.org
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT
Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your
opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash
http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV
_______________________________________________
WiX-users mailing list
WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
