Andreas Jellinghaus wrote:
How important is support for windows before XP?
If we would use VC8 with SxS directories for DLLs
and all those goodies, we would depend on windows installer 3.1
which to my knowledge is only for Win XP SP2, or would at least
require installing it on other plattforms.
Also SxS directories only work on Windows XP, right?
For Windows 2k and older we would still need to install
all DLLs in System32.
Douglas, you experimented with the ID Ally CSP and got it
working with opensc, right?
Yes.
If so, could you tell me:
a) the CSP documentation states that not only the CSP but also
all dll's used by the CSP need to be signed by microsoft. I think
that is wrong, and our DLLs - OpenSC-pkcs11.dll, libopensc.dll,
libltdl.dll, openssl.dll etc. - are all unsigned and it still works.
Can you confirm this?
Yes, you are correct. It dynamicly loads the opensc-pkcs11.dll and this
is not signed.
b) do you know of any way to get the ID Ally CSP to work without our
libraries installed in system32?
I will try tommorrow. It uses the registry to find the opensc-pkcs11.dll.
But how does opensc-pkcs11 find its other dlls? During login there
may not be a path set, so you can't depend on opensc being in the path.
if we can get an CSP to work without
(and putty, mozilla thunderbird and firefox still work too), we might
change our installation stuff to only install them in some program
directory.
But I guess getting mozilla&friends to work would require the dlls
either in system32 or in the mozilla directory or some ugly hacks,
so b) is not very interesting anyway.
Its not that I'm against all those ideas like cygwin, mingw, not
installing in system32 etc. But I failed to get any of them to work or
suspenct it won't work (never tried using CSP without libs in system32).
So the best anyone interested in this topic is to experiment and post
your results. if you get it working, I'd be happy to add it - maybe
first as option and if it works out for our users and is less pain then
we can make it default and even dump the old way.
These "redistributables" are the way Microsoft is addressing the DLL
problems, and i believe you will see a lot more of this in Vista.
but have new problems themself. it looks like Inno and NSIS don't play
well so far with the SxS stuff, and building MSI manually is a lot of pain.
Sure, with a full Visual Studio and one of the commercial installer
tools it might be much easier to create user friendly packages for our
users. If anyone wants to work on that, I'd be happy.
But also I want to keep some option how people with a small/minimal set
of windows and MS tools can recompile opensc and use it. That doesn't
mean necessarily cygwin or mingw, I think enought people have some older
visual studio, and requiring that is ok for me. (Still cygwin/mingw
might be a nice option - but I need to see that they can be used to
create a version that works with CSP and Mozilla-)
The one thing I have not figured out is how these assembles get
installed.
The Inno Setup Script software you are using to generate install packages
may not be up to date on installing side-by-side assemblies.
Well, I thought about switching to NSIS, Stef had suggested that at some
point too, and now I know local people who use it and can ask them for
help. But I'm not sure NSIS doesn't know about SxS directories any
better - will ask for details. One commend i saw on a blog was that you
need to merge redistributeable MSI packages and that this even requires
windows installer 3.1 which is only (included or available - not sure)
for Windows XP SP2.
That's what microsoft is telling everyone: "Use our new FOO 200x
system and you're ready for WIndows Vista". IMHO, VC8 introduces yet
another installation problem, the dependency on mscr80.dll. In one
year you will find your WinXP installation crowded with ate least10
different versions of this DLL, installed from 10 different vendors.
nothing new here. well, to be true: there is news. they rethought the
problem and designed the SxS stuff to counter exactly that.
See above, the best solution would be a VC8 compiler/linker switch to
use the reduced API of msvcrt.dll, which should IMHO sufficient for
opensc.
hey, I didn't know that even existed. can you tell me more about it, I'd
like to try out.
A second best solution put the burden to check for a mscr80.dll
installed on your system on the SCB installer program. This should be
at least true for Windows Vista. My experience showed, that I have to
place msvc80.dll either in system32 or SCB install dir in order to
get a VC8-compiled opensc operational.
right now I don't care much about vista, as it still is half a year
away, and most people will not jump on it the day it is released.
sure, it is wise to look out for problems to come, but Windows XP
and maybe even older versions are what people currently use.
Regards, Andreas
--
Douglas E. Engert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Argonne National Laboratory
9700 South Cass Avenue
Argonne, Illinois 60439
(630) 252-5444
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