I understand, and it wasn't meant as a criticism. It just seems to be a common story that some developer on the team with some set of skills will be pressed into service as the setup guy with a different skill set requirement. Occasionally people are surprised by that difference. Setup is just copying files, right??? How hard can it be? But you volunteered, so good, and welcome to the setup club. You'll probably run into other areas where setups require a different way of thinking. (One model is that you should write setups as if you're updating the company's payroll database with no backup to correct it if you fnd out you did it wrong when it's all over.) Also, C++ will always be useful, so if you're just starting out I'd certainly recommend you learning it (include managed C++ too) because you'll stand out from all those guys who only have C#.
Phil Wilson ________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dhaval Patel Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 4:20 PM To: Levi Wilson Cc: Danish Waheed; wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [WiX-users] C# .dll Phil: My PM and all the senior engineers who interviewed me, hired me on the basis of my C# skills. I was the one who started packaging my company's deployment packages using WIX - all (and I mean ALL) the folks in my company still use XCopy and batch files. I raised this issue (calling C# .dlls from WIX) because it is something that seems eminent and invigorating. I like learning newer technologies and I ended up learning WIX myself, not because my superiors 'forced it upon me' (they are least interested in such issues anyway :)) or because it was a core requirement. I just like my packages to be deployed in an 'orderly' manner and what better than WIX to do such things!! That being said, I am not complaining that WIX doesn't support .NET .dlls - I am merely raising an issue that will be raised by others as more people start adopting WIX. I have coded in ANSI C (in college, not exaggerating) for a semester, because I was forced to. Personally I felt it was horrible, but then I also believed that I couldn't be a programmer unless I started from the ground up. Of course I could learn C++, and who knows someday I will, but at this point in time I see myself as a hardcore C# enthusiast (of course a newbie as far as my programming skills go!). Anyway, I just wanted to find out the reasons why this can't happen (at least for now), and I think Richard made some good points. I completely overlooked the issue of 'undoing' a custom action, but I was thinking more on the lines of 'if it is doable in C++, it must be a breeze to redo it in C#'. Thanks for all the replies (the issue surely raised a few eyebrows.. hehe). On 3/19/07, Levi Wilson < [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: And C++ will NEVER die. On 3/19/07, Danish Waheed <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: I think one of the reasons why Windows Installer does not have lots of fancy actions is because they are not generally related to installation and hence the support for Custom Actions. You cannot include all the possible actions as there are so many types of software and so many configuration/changes required, that it is better to leave them to the developer to write custom actions for their needs. Now for .NET Custom Actions, I think it will be cool to have support for that, but at the same time, I think vbScript and Jscript are very easy to use and learn compared to C++, in case someone does not want to spend time on C++. Besides, if you know Object Oriented Programming, like C#, learning C++ is not that difficult especially if it is just for Custom Actions. It may take a bit extra time for you to write a DLL in the beginning, but once it is done, adding more functions to it is very easy. There are so many tutorials out there that you can learn from. I am not a C++ programmer by any means and most of my coding has been in C# and Java so I understand where Dhaval is coming from. But I had to write custom actions in C++ as it was not an option at several places I worked at. So if you like being a setup developer for Windows, learning C++ will definitely help you in the longer run. Now one must avoid using Custom Actions unless it is really required and is something that Windows Installer cannot do. But can you avoid it or not depends on the software you are writing setup for, I have seen a lot of products with more than 50 Custom Actions and all of them doing something that Windows Installer cannot do. Once you start working on complex software setup, things get messy very easily and the best way to handle those Custom Actions is to write Custom Action dll in C++. Just my two cents. Thanks Danish Waheed -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 11:44 AM To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [WiX-users] C# .dll One other concern in making custom actions in C# (or anything else) is that as Rob regularly observes, custom actions are very difficult to get right - especially when considering installation failure (rollback) and appropriate uninstall operation. Speaking for myself, I try to avoid them whenever possible. In fact I think the only custom actions I currently have in any of the installations I have generated relate to the verification at installation time of a customer entered license key. Many people seem to look at custom actions as a way to do things that aren't supported by Microsoft Installer itself. While true, it is also often true that there is a reason why Microsoft Installer doesn't currently contain built-in support for that specific action. Regards, Richard --- Original message follows --- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dhaval Patel Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 10:45 AM To: Rob Mensching Cc: Joe Kaplan; wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [WiX-users] C# .dll "Folks like me," meaning people who have minuscule experience programming in VBScript or C++. I pretty much started learning to program in C# back in 2002, graduated last year, and am currently working as a C#/ASP.NET developer. Of course I could embark on a journey to learn C++, but I think the rest of the world is moving to .NET, especially with the advent of C# 3.0 (LINQ), CLR 3.5, etc. I rather spend time on exploring new features of C# 3.0 and CLR 3.5. I am still a WIX newbie by any means - I hope I didn't offend you by saying 'people like me' :) In essence what I was trying to say is that folks who excel in C# will be able to exploit WIX's features to a greater extent. Plus I think if this happens, many developers will start adopting WIX right away. I still have a few colleagues who don't want to use just because they can't pass values read from a WIX User dialog to a C# .dll. One (hypothetical) example most people would put this functionality to use is writing their own custom SQL connection strings using the SqlConnectionStringBuilder. --- Remainder of message history trimmed --- * C O N F I D E N T I A L I T Y N O T I C E * ----------------------------------------------------------- The content of this e-mail is intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom it is addressed. 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