John Vottero wrote:
I agree that writing a good CA is hard but, I'll bet it's easier in C# than it is in C.
The guts -- whatever the CA actually needs to do -- can be. But that's unlikely to encourage table-driven, state-driven CAs.
I also agree that eliminating a CA is the best way to make it robust.
Which is why I want to see more teams documenting what they need, rather than just providing black boxes. Even the best-written software product can have crud for black box deployment -- too many folks think it's the job of contractors or interns or newbies to handle "that setup stuff."
The "future flexibility" angle is my biggest worry. One of these days, some team is going to completely scramble what their managed installer does and they'll think that they aren't breaking anything. If they really want that future flexibility, they have to put some pressure on the Windows Installer team to support managed Installers.
That's providing free band-aids in the box rather than fixing the wound in the first place. What are the chances a team that ignores built-in MSI functionality is going to also write good table/state-driven CAs -- managed or not? Making it easier to ship shoddy CAs doesn't help developers make robust setups. And that's the goal, right? There are levels to robustness:
- Built-in MSI functionality (e.g., Registry table). - Common table/state-driven CAs (e.g., WiX's XmlConfig). - Custom table/state-driven CAs (e.g., MSHelp 2.x).- Custom CAs that are state-driven but with embedded data (e.g., most InstallUtil stuff). - Custom CAs that are neither state-driven nor table-driven (e.g., most self-reg).
The further down the list, the less likely you have good support for rollback, patching, modify, repair, or even uninstall.
The part that's most frustrating is that the higher on the table, the easier it is -- less work to implement and test -- than further down the list.
So yes, short answer: I want the MSI team to focus on more important features and product teams to do the right thing.
-- sig://boB http://bobs.org
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