Again, it seems you misunderstood my intention due to your personal experience with lazy people etc. Sorry that I don't match your pattern here and actually am not lazy but just wanted to get help with the problem described (from my point of view) actually clearly in the subject line. If you expect everybody to be a MSI + WiX master, then on that background it should be clear what this subject line targets in. Anyways, if you think it was my fault, ok, let's assume it was my fault and now let's stick with it. I will try to more explicitly tell what my actual problem is next time. Have no time for more lenghty emails like that one, as *my* manager wants me to make my time *just* get that single job done (will never have to write more setups in the next months) and *not* to become MSI or WiX experts, since it is just more efficient to *ask* these experts for help (maybe there is an expert willing to make some dollars with asking our silly questions?). We're JAVA experts and just have to use MSI for this single project. But let's stop this thread now.
Regars Markus > -----Original Message----- > From: Castro, Edwin G. (Hillsboro) [mailto:edwin.cas...@fiserv.com] > Sent: Dienstag, 13. April 2010 18:34 > To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. > Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Searching for existing files but only once > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Markus Karg [mailto:k...@quipsy.de] > > Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2010 7:37 AM > > To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. > > Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Searching for existing files but only once > > > > > I assure you, all of us were beginners once.<g> And, of course, > > > learning > > > WiX is almost trivial; it's MSI that's hard. > > > > That's not true in one point: WiX comes with lots of stuff that has > > nothing to do with MSI. See the extensions. Maybe somebody write a > > brilliant custom task that does what we need, but he did not > contribute > > it but just put it somewhere in some foreign place. How should we > learn > > about that without asking? And where to ask if not here? I mean, we > did > > *not* ask "How to solve that with 100% pure MSI?". We described just > > our > > problem: We want to have a DirectoryScan run only once. but we do not > > want to write it completely from scratch. It is a valid solution (and > > [Castro, Edwin (Hillsboro)] > And the explicit answer to your question is "You can't do that. If you > want a DirectoryScan that runs only once *you* need to build it > yourself." Did you find the wix-contrib project in your research? How > about the msiext project? There are very few projects out there were > sharing custom actions (the MSI way of doing non-MSI things) with the > rest of the world. One of them happens to be the WiX project. I can > only think of two others and I've seen references to both of them in > the mailing list in the past. > > The problem with your question is "but we do not want to write it > completely from scratch". You _know_ you need a custom action to > achieve your goal because you understand how RegistrySearch and > FileSearch, etc, work. They execute on every run. Your question should > reflect that you understand already how MSI works and that WiX does not > have a standard custom action to do the work for you. It would be nice > to show that you've looked at the other two projects that intend to > provide open source custom actions, wix-contrib and msiext, and didn't > find a custom action that does what you'd like. It would be nice to > show to us that you are look for somebody to share their custom action > code with you in some way. As far as I could tell none of this > information was given unless somebody requested it. > > > > Sadly, it's becoming more common: Even theoretically smart people > who > > > understand foundations want to put some work like setup in the "it > > > shouldn't be hard, so therefore it isn't hard" bucket and avoid > > > planning > > > it or even considering it might require some engineering effort. > > > > On the other hand, as a project manager, I'd love it more if people > get > > solutions quickly by asking others instead of spending weeks with > > trying > > things others already proven to be impossible or inefficient. Ain't > it > > part of the idea of a forum to share experience? Won't you like to > just > > download a sample code from us when starting with a technology we > have > > lots of experience with and you have not, just to reduce time to > > understand Chapter X from one week to five minutes? At least my > > managing > > director will kick my ass if he learns that my coders are spending > time > > with weird experiments if there is someone out there having the > answer > > in the pocket, but we just didn't dare to ask because we want to > > prevent > > senseless discussion like this one... > > [Castro, Edwin (Hillsboro)] > If I was a manager I would fire any employee that didn't show an > aptitude for learning. With a field that changes as quickly as this one > does (seems like everything is obsolete the day before it launched) I > would expect everyone to value learning above everything else. If you > can't solve the problem today because you have a knowledge gap then you > need to fix that pronto or risk getting stuck in an endless cycle of > asking your peers to solve your problems for you. There's a _*HUGE*_ > difference between asking for advice/help on understanding one aspect > of a technology you don't understand and flat out asking for somebody > to do your homework. You *should* have asked about projects with open > source custom actions and/or anybody who happened to have implemented a > solution for your problem and would like to share it with you from the > start. You would have gotten, at least, links immediately to wix- > contrib (if it has any content now, last time I checked it was very > bare) and msiext (this project has a lot more content). That would also > have told you that you would need to invest in writing a custom action > from scratch because either nobody had done this before or nobody has > permission to share their code with the public. > > As for senseless, I agree this is a senseless discussion in that we > shouldn't be having it to begin with. BUT I value learning enough to > become disgusted at the sight of a peer behaving like many of my > classmates back in college where their goal was simply to get the job > done. Next course, they wouldn't have the background, skill, knowledge, > etc to even perform the tasks they had "accomplished" in the previous > course. They hadn't learned anything. My whole point was if anything, > you should learn to ask questions differently. There was one person > (now two) that lost their patience with you because of the *way* you > ask for help. Not because you _asked_ for help. > > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > ------- > Download Intel® Parallel Studio Eval > Try the new software tools for yourself. Speed compiling, find bugs > proactively, and fine-tune applications for parallel performance. > See why Intel Parallel Studio got high marks during beta. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-sw-dev > _______________________________________________ > WiX-users mailing list > WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download Intel® Parallel Studio Eval Try the new software tools for yourself. Speed compiling, find bugs proactively, and fine-tune applications for parallel performance. See why Intel Parallel Studio got high marks during beta. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-sw-dev _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
