By the nature of the situation of the company at that time I happened to be both the manager and the architect. So I didn't complain to myself. I certainly drank the cool-aid during my MSFT years on Wix ... it was an obvious choice for me.
Unless you're in the installer business you're not writing another Java installation framework. If you want to use an existing one, go ahead, do it. Let's just be clear about requirements: you need to support install, uninstall, upgrade and rollback. And on Windows it has to be an MSI, cause you can't sell to the enterprise otherwise. Comparing results and source code creates an interesting dynamic. The best thing that comes out of it is that the installer needs to be simpler and a lot of that good Java code that was just written belongs in the application itself and should run the first time it runs or the first time it does something useful. The installer then copies files! We both win. Oh and I do a lot of talking so I can lie convincingly :) dB. @ dblock.org Moscow|Geneva|Seattle|New York -----Original Message----- From: Christopher Painter [mailto:chr...@deploymentengineering.com] Sent: Friday, September 03, 2010 8:59 AM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Bootstrapping and Burn dB- I've mostly gone down your road over the last year and I know have about 50 out of 250 developers capable ( and they do when needed ) of contributing to setup. We continue to have 4 setup experts ( really only 2 FTEs because we split our time on builds where needed ) to guide the entire process and advise development when application design problems are causing setup problems and to solve the harder setup problems when needed. Things are now going way smoother then they have in years past. My approach is different then yours in that I maintained ownership of the architecture and only delegated certain responsibilities to dev. Your approach seems to go much farther and I wonder... when you made that first step, how did you prevent your dev/architect from comping up with some home brewed Java based imperative installer? How did you get hime to teach WiX? Had he already used it? Had he already drank from the kool-aid so to speak? If I tasked one of the many architects at many of the companies I've worked at they would ended up designing something with VDPROJ or NSIS or wierder such as Pastrami. Hence why I took the approach that I did. Chris Christopher Painter, Author of Deployment Engineering Blog Have a hot tip, know a secret or read a really good thread that deserves attention? E-Mail Me ----- Original Message ---- From: dB. <dbl...@dblock.org> To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. <wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net> Sent: Fri, September 3, 2010 7:32:40 AM Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Bootstrapping and Burn It's a management problem. My developers hated writing installer code and learning anything about it as long as we had a setup developer. They had no idea how complex it can get and why they should care. They wanted to write Java code, it seemed better. Incidentally we had about a 65% failure rate at deploying their awesome Java code and naturally many unhappy customers. The solution was not to tell the setup developer to work harder but to get rid of his position altogether, task the architect to redesign the deployment story and teach developers Wix, forcing them to write at least one full installer. We took the time to explain topics such as upgrade, do brown bags on custom actions and wix extensions (PPTs that I use available @ http://msiext.codeplex.com). Devs actually started loving simple things like not having to do anything to replace a file by another during upgrade and not having to ask a setup developer to add that file in the first place. They just do it. Eventually setup stops being a problem and becomes a natural thing everyone does. I even have one person who recently chose a deployment-related project to a Java one! If anyone has a development team in our initial situation and needs help with some external convincing, I'd be happy to volunteer my time and travel and talk about our experience. We are www.appsecinc.com in NYC - I now have 35 setup-enabled developers and we're certainly not in the deployment business. cheers dB. dB. @ dblock.org Moscow|Geneva|Seattle|New York -----Original Message----- From: Tony Juricic [mailto:tjuri...@tradestation.com] Sent: Friday, September 03, 2010 12:58 AM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Bootstrapping and Burn Yep. Primadonnas that "just write their glorious code" and expect that somebody else takes care of how it ends up installed on the end user system(s) are more norm than exception. In fact, I can understand that. For example, I wouldn't mind having a dedicated slave to press compile and fix my coding errors button. I could be thinking about the important things in the meantime. -----Original Message----- From: Christopher Painter [mailto:chr...@deploymentengineering.com] Sent: Thursday, September 02, 2010 6:49 PM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Bootstrapping and Burn I agree with you Bob except for one problem. I've found so few setup experts who also have the broader application development experience. Too few developers want to specialize in this space. Christopher Painter, Author of Deployment Engineering Blog Have a hot tip, know a secret or read a really good thread that deserves attention? E-Mail Me ----- Original Message ---- From: Bob Arnson <b...@joyofsetup.com> To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Thu, September 2, 2010 7:32:20 AM Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Bootstrapping and Burn On 02-Sep-10 06:13, Pally Sandher wrote: > I have personally fixed things like that myself. Last year one of our dev's >decided to implement the use of CAPICOM for some basic password encryption& >MD5 > >checking& thought it was OK to tell me "just self-register the CAPICOM DLL in >the installer& it'll work". He was also recommending we use an out-dated >version of the discontinued CAPICOM containing some known security >vulnerabilities. I re-wrote his code using the CryptoAPI completely removing >the > >need for the CAPICOM redistributable. Incidentally he no longer works for us >any > >more. > > When the product developers make stupid decisions which impact upon setup >development, call them on it or be prepared to put up with more of the same >until the end of time. This is why it's important for "setup developers" to be developers in their own right, so they can speak with authority and, when necessary, write code outside of setup to "lend a hand." -- sig://boB http://joyofsetup.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net Dev2Dev email is sponsored by: Show off your parallel programming skills. 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