[ros-dev] Package Manager
Steven Edwards
steven_ed4153 at yahoo.com
Thu Mar 31 16:31:50 CEST 2005
--- Maarten Bosma <maarten.paul at bosma.de> wrote:
> If I understood you correctly you said that there is no need for
> developing a compleatly new system, a Packagemanager only had to provide
> a interface for the msi files.
Right, You can interface directly to the MSI database in the registry.
> First of all, I have to say that I don't know much about that msi stuff.
> So my question is how would the msi file and the program communicte ?
> The point with a packagemanager is that you choose to install lots of
> packages and leave your PC alone. So the package manager had to send the
> dessions of the user to the msi file and then the msi file had to do
> it's operations senlitly. And send reports to the package manager from
> time to time. And if something went wrong, it has to send a compleate
> error report.
Well MSI packages have a lot of options, more so than are used by most people. Most people just
write a Install Shield wizard and have the software packaged in a msi but it can do self-repair
and modification and all sorts of cool stuff. Most third partys now ship apps as MSI as its what
Microsoft supports or they use NullSoft Install System so making a easy to use interface to both
of them will win the most support. Its like a mini-sql database so you can even use XML to mess
with it in your Package Manager. If I understand correctly the Microsoft tool for creating MSI
packages "WiX", uses a xml file for input. The only problem is that WiX is CPL and not GPL so we
cannot ship it with ReactOS unless we make it a seperate download.
Thanks
Steven
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Personals - Better first dates. More second dates.
http://personals.yahoo.com
More information about the Ros-dev
mailing list