IMO, I don't ever do this. I really don't care who does and what reasons they
come up for doing it, I don't and will not ever do it. I also generate
ProductCodes at build time to support major upgrades. I've also generated
multiple instance installers where I generate new guids for each of the
instance transforms.
I have no intention of trying to put that level of meaning to a really big ass
random number. I track my UpgradeCodes and release / labels and versions but
not my ProductCodes and PackageCodes. I just let them be randomized.
Chris
---
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--- On Mon, 5/9/11, Aaron Klor <aaron.k...@gmail.com> wrote:
From: Aaron Klor <aaron.k...@gmail.com>
Subject: [WiX-users] [Wix-users] Less than completely random ProductCodes
To: "General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset."
<wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net>
Date: Monday, May 9, 2011, 9:12 AM
We are considering defining our product codes for our different instances
with a bit more structure than the random GUID generation that is usually
recommended. We are considering this because we have to define a large
number of product code GUIDs for each product AND change them every time we
do a build. There is precedent for this sort of behavior (set by the
Micrsoft Office team, see
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\90140000-XXXX-XXXX-0000000FF1CE),
so we've decided to ask the list in order to hopefully gain some insight as
to whether this is considered “bad form” or if this might be acceptable.
For reference, we were considering something of this form:
{XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-CoPr-MaMiRvBildIn}
Where the X’s are randomly generated GUID bits, but will be the same
throughout our products
The description of the rest of the fields are:
Co: 8-bit company code (human-readable, using A-F)
Pr: 8-bit product code (human-readable, using A-F)
Ma: Major rev
Mi: Minor rev
Rv: Revision
Bild: Build number
In: Instance number
We understand that this significantly reduces the randomness of the GUID
(potentially removing the GU part of GUID), but given the manageability
gains, we feel that it might be worth it. It gives us the ability to easily
generate (and programmatically search for) up to 255 instances, allows for
revisions up to 255.255.255.65535, and can potentially simplify our WiX
authoring.
Obviously, this will cause problems in the case a GUID collision occurs
between our product and someone else's, but we find this highly unlikely
given that there are still 64 random bits in the GUID. I suppose the real
question is: is there something that we're missing? Might this sort of thing
affect things outside the ARP on Windows machines?
Thank you for your help,
Aaron Klor
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