Ok, just from the emails I'm seeing a pattern here of a design smell.
WiX has two tools that "deconstruct a database". Dark generates source
code and a flat folder structure. Melt updates an existing wixpdb and a
tiered folder structure.
Perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree. I dunno. I just think that it
would be *really* nice to have one tool (dark, melt, or a new tool) that
generates the folder structure AND one or both of the other two pieces of
functionality.
The issue I have with moving ONLY the database extraction to one of the two
tools is now we have a disconnect between how the Files/Binary/Icon folders
land on disk and how the wixpdb or wxs (melt or dark respectively) gets
updated.
Dark could do ALL three of these things. I don't think that anyone would
complain about Dark being able to handle deconstructing a WiX generated
installer. It was mentioned that it is intended to be used when moving
from an alien (ahem, InstallShiteld) but what if someone lost the original
WiX source for an installer? Dark is awesome BTW.
It just seems to me like this is a three-sided pyramid of functionality and
we have two tools that do the base (differently) and then they each take
care of one of the two sides on their own.
I think one less executable would be a good thing. Less code to maintain,
etc. etc.
I love stirring the pot. This is fun :)
On Tue Jan 20 2015 at 14:20:11 Rob Mensching <r...@firegiant.com> wrote:
> We have light and lit today because C/C++ has link.exe/lib.exe. If someone
> wanted to argue that we should get rid of lit.exe and just make light.exe
> the tool that outputs build stuff, I could see that. Lit *is* different
> because it doesn't do linking or binding which makes it different beastie...
>
> Okay. What do you mean "higher-level model"? We need to do lots of work in
> the build .targets alone to span builds and such to support patching but
> I'm not sure that's what you'd mean by "higher-level model".
>
> _______________________________________________________________
> FireGiant | Dedicated support for the WiX toolset |
> http://www.firegiant.com/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Arnson [mailto:b...@joyofsetup.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2015 10:46 AM
> To: wix-devs@lists.sourceforge.net
> Subject: Re: [WiX-devs] Updating Melt to extract files from the Binary
> table for patching
>
> On 19-Jan-15 16:13, Rob Mensching wrote:
> > I'm really not at all excited about *another* tool in v4.
> Why do we have Light and Lit? :)
> > I guess that's where I'd like to see this in v4 (or later if it can't
> make v4): patching should operate off the standard build output: msi,
> external cabs/files, and .wixpdb. If we can't patch from that, we should
> enhance what we're outputting to patch it.
> The current model seems like a bad fit for magicking the .wixpdbs. I think
> we need a higher-level model to squeeze that in. I'm not at all opposed to
> that, fwiw. :)
>
> --
> sig://boB
> http://joyofsetup.com/
>
>
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GigeNET is offering a free month of service with a new server in Ashburn.
Choose from 2 high performing configs, both with 100TB of bandwidth.
Higher redundancy.Lower latency.Increased capacity.Completely compliant.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/gigenet
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