Andy,
Re getting Dolphin runtimes installed on target machines, would installing
the plugin be sufficient?
So far, I've managed to pound out an MSI file for one of my apps, and remain
undecided on whether to try to convert everything to it. There are
undeniable benefits, but, the down side is a complex set of rules that would
be very easy to violate. Validation will prevent many disasters, but, I'm
concerned about long-range "you can't get there from here" problems with
upgrades. Even things as simple as file-by-file settings for when to
overwrite _appear_ to be unsupported. Commercial tools are quite expensive,
and I don't get a sense (from limited reading of
microsoft.public.platformsdk.msi) that they have satisfied users.
One potentially distrubing comment comes from
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q257/6/04.asp"MDAC and DCOM are vital to many applications written for the Win32
platform. A requirement of the Application Specification for Windows 2000
desktop applications is to use the Windows Installer. However, because MDAC
and DCOM redistributable merge modules do not exist, DCOM and MDAC
installation must be done outside of a Windows Installer .msi file. You can
use this sample, Wrapper.exe, as-is or modify it to meet custom needs. "
Absense of DCOM does not concern me, but, problems installing MDAC might,
depending on the definition - I use ODBC. Zooming out for a moment: why
don't the merge modules exist? The question is largely rhetorical, but, the
answers that come to mind are sorta scary.
Here's a scenario: an app needs an Access database and some text files that
must never be overwritten if present, along with a Dolphin executable that
should be overwritten by newer files, and some versioned and non-versioned
DLLs that also should be conditionally overwritten. It is ok to re-register
the ODBC dataSOURCE. Is that something that could be assembled using the VS
installer? What is your understanding of how one would redeploy the msi
file if the Dolphin app is redeployed? Is it as simple as giving out a new
msi with a new package code and instructions to "repair", or does it require
more care?
Have a good one,
Bill
--
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
[hidden email]
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