[indiana-discuss] Brief (blogged) thoughts on packaging

[Jason J. W. Williams]

Hi Alberto,

Yes

> Have you used WiX? I did, and I don't even found words in my mother
> tongue to tell you how broken it is in terms of maintanability, 60% of
> that is due to the XML thing.

Yes I do on a daily basis right now (WiX v3)...which is why it was
fresh in my mind. I find it pretty straightforward. The main issue I
run into with it are the ICE errors that are really an issue with the
brokenness in MSIs. Anywho, I don't really want to diverge too far off
topic on WiX. Its just a tool that I think solves the issue of
defining build packages pretty well.

In general, XML isn't the tool for every problem. But in my opinion
build packages are an area where well-formedness and schema (with a
small "s") enforcement is important, and XML fits those problem sets
very well. Also, most packaging systems treat packages as
mini-databases containing the required structured data (attributes,
required packages/versions, etc.) and unstructured data (pre/post
install scripts, custom actions, file data, etc.). I think XML is a
good way to define the structured data, and the relationships of the
structured data to the unstructured data.

The one-attribute of WiX that has nothing to do with XML, but which I
think is a very good design element, is the ability split your package
build files into sub files. Each developer can maintain the sub file
that affects his part of the project, and keep it in sync with changes
in requirements and installation directives for his components.
Building the package, then is simply a process of checking out the
latest copy of the sub-build files and building it. This is very
helpful for automating the package build process on larger projects.

Best Regards,
Jason


>
> Let's talk about the problems that we want to solve instead to
> focusing on which technologies would be cool to use.
>
>
> --
> Un saludo,
> Alberto Ruiz
>