I think reasons people want to write managed CAs are the same ones that motivate them to write other pieces of code in managed code. It is more productive and potentially much less error prone. It is really just as simple as that.
As I said before, managed code doesn't solve very many of the problems of writing good CAs in the first place. It doesn't address the how to design good table-driven, declarative authoring for the CA or the whole transactional aspect of the model. It does (hopefully) make many of the memory management problems disappear and give you this huge library of useful code to draw from that is very well integrated compared to most other options out there. My instincts tell me most of the time, CAs are needed for doing configuration of server software more than client software. Server software often includes the need to do IIS stuff, SQL, XML, perf counters, event logs/sources, WMI sinks, message queues, local security policy changes, COM+, etc, in order to get the software deployed and working without lots of manual steps post installation. A lot of these setups are for internal IT stuff and not just packaged commercial installers, as the internal IT guys are trying find ways to make their software easier to deploy and get more mileage out of their investments in their automated build processes. As a result, some of these setups may only ever need to run on a handful of machines. To this end, I think WiX has actually done a very admirable job of rising to meet this challenge by attempting to provide CAs that meet a lot of these needs. My impression is that people often resort to CAs when they encounter a functionality gap in WiX or a bug in the existing implementation. As WiX continues to evolve and improve, these gaps and bugs will slowly fade and will hopefully make a lot of the need for CAs fade as well. I would much rather see the WiX community continue to improve these areas than to get tied up in any sort of general purpose framework for implementing managed CAs. I completely agree with Rob that feedback regarding managed CAs should go to the WI team at MS and not the WiX community. Still, the discussion came up here, so I wanted to throw in my thoughts so that others participating in the discussion could understand my perspective. :) My overall points are: - Managed CAs make at least as much sense as script CAs (if not more!) and should be supported in WI as first class constructs (NOT WiX's problem!). - There is is clearly some dissonance within MS in terms of how setup ought to be done with the existing tension between managed installer classes, installutil.exe and the VS setup project installutillib thingy/hack and "the right way" to do things are prescribed by the WI team. Setup developers are the victim as they are receiving mixed messages on what they really should do. - WiX is doing the right thing by continuing to build a robust library of CAs to support the common tasks. Joe K. ----- Original Message ----- From: "DEÁK JAHN, Gábor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WiX-users" <wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net> Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2007 4:08 PM Subject: [WiX-users] C# .dll > On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 20:38:16 +0000, Fredrik Grohn wrote: > > First to all, please, clear out all the participants from the To: and CC: > lines and keep the discussion on the list itself. I guess we all monitor > it regularly so it's really not beneficial to receive every posting twice, > both directly and from the list. > > Fredrik, > >> What I don't understand is why people are so eager to build managed >> custom actions in the first place. > > That's what bothers me, too. If somebody really wanting to write a managed > (or unmanaged) custom action could tell us why he or she needs it in the > first place. I completely agree with Richard Foster, me, too: the only > real custom action I ever wrote was to check the product key entered by > the user. I have a suspicion that the need for custom actions stem from > sloppy programming of the application to be installed rather than any > real, legitimate need for something WI can't solve. > > Bye, > Gábor > > ------------------------------------------------------------------- > DEÁK JAHN, Gábor -- Budapest, Hungary > E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
