On 7/16/07, Bob Arnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Scott Palmer wrote:
> Microsoft certainly doesn't like to make things easy do they? I
> assume though that if someone in the WMF group clued in to using MSI
> that they might also have the foresight to provide a merge module for
> the redistributables. Kind of like they should have years ago.
Merge modules are used less and less these days as it's not possible for
the merge module provider to publish patches that update all products on
a machine.
I've only used merge modules to install shared components like the VC8
runtime. I assume that merge modules would update all products in the case
of machine-wide shared components like that. I think the WMF
redistributables are similar.
And there is always hope that a future version of MSI will allow merge
modules to update all products in other cases. The main point being that
some sort of coherent, organized, structured install procedure - that is
used consistently across MS provided components would be a great help. I
was under the impression that MSI was supposed to fill that role, and then I
found out after I was in too deep that MS or MS' inconsistent use of MSI
(and various other installer "rules") falls short of the mark. The signals
sent to developers are even mixed in that regard, causing developers to make
mistakes that effect other developers. (E.g. the promotion of self
registration in the developer tools, and the simultaneous disclaimer that
you should never use self-registration.)
This has very little to do with WiX and checkboxes however :-)... except in
cases where WiX can work around MSI's shortcomings for the developer...
Which suggests that WiX should probably fail if a checkbox control is used
without setting a CheckBoxValue attribute. A good error message could have
easily provided the solution to my original problem. Maybe there was a
warning.. but it was lost among the zillions of warnings caused by the VC8
merge modules - foiled by MS again.
Thanks for the help everyone.
Scott
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