Efforts/Package Restructuring/Backends/MS Windows/Installer
Contents
Scenario
Access: Product View
The Product View as accessible from "Add or Remove Programs" (update,change,remove) as well as from the "tools" menu entry.
Note: I currently only have seen "change" and "remove" buttons in "Add or Remove Programs". Are other buttons possible?
Product View: Update
- Setup
- Multiple installations of OOo and derivatives
- Action
- User/Administrator opens the Product View and presses updates
- Result
- All shared files of this product and other products are updated. E.g. StarOffice 9, StarSuite 9 and OOo 3.0 would share everything, except the brand. Updating of StarOffice 9 leads to updated StarSuite and OOo as well.
Mixed Installation: System Office / User Extensions
Capabilities
Experiments under Windows with WiX (Windows Installer XML) show,
- that any set of products may share any number of files,
- that any one product may update any number of other products (basically leading to a de-installation of these other products), and
- that any product sharing files with other products may update any number of these shared files.
This lets me think, that Windows is as dynamic and flexible as the classic package based platforms, while providing a simpler user interface.
- Merge Modules
- "In order to avoid versioning problems, you should use always merge modules for any component or file that will be shared by multiple applications." [1]
- Product Independent Updates
- To realize product independent updates I basically see two options,
- try to use the Installer API[2] to install/update shared "components" programmatically, or
- split OOo into hierarchical dependent products (e.g. URE, CORE, brands), which are to be installed concurrently (see Concurrent Installations[3]) and may utilize product hiding[4] (e.g. for the "Basis") in the "Add and Remove Programs" dialogue. See also http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa368010(VS.85).aspx / "Concurrent Installations": "The recommended alternative to using concurrent installations is to instead use a setup application and external UI handler to install several Windows Installer packages sequentially."
Product View
Repository Support
MS Windows uses the WSUS (Windows Server Update Services)[5] to keep Windows and MS applications current. With the latest version, so called "Local Publishing" by using the WSUS API becomes possible[6]. This may be an opportunity to enable WSUS to publish OOo updates ...
WSUS Links: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/en-us/sus/default.mspx
