coapp-developers team mailing list archive

[Garrett Serack <garretts@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yes, my plan is to fall back to junctions on XP/2k3. (I mentioned that somewhere in the wiki too...)

No Worries. I'm not discounting XP SP3 & 2k3 at all. They are required platforms in my opinion.



From: coapp-developers-bounces+garretts=microsoft.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:coapp-developers-bounces+garretts=microsoft.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Trevor Dennis
Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2010 9:58 AM
To: coapp-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Coapp-developers] Another kind of package

XP/2003 don't support symbolic links at all.  Will junctions (hard links) be good enough?

Don't discount XP and 2003 as old operating systems.  Coming from the corporate world (EDS and now HP), we have 60%+ desktops still on XP SP2/SP3 and probably 90%+ on Windows 2003.  Some servers still on Windows 2000, and just a few are starting to move to 2008 as new hardware is purchased.  This is probably comparable to every other corporation out there (other than Microsoft itself).

If this project is going to work, it has to support XP SP3 at a minimum.  At least as long as Microsoft is supporting XP SP3.  I'd say even SP2 right now but they're dropping regular support for that this summer.

Trev.


From: coapp-developers-bounces+trevor=dennis-it.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:coapp-developers-bounces+trevor=dennis-it.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Garrett Serack
Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2010 10:22 AM
To: Rivera, Rafael; coapp-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Coapp-developers] Another kind of package

Arg!

We're absolutely trying to avoid relying on LUAFS (the component that silently virtualizes writes out of [\Program Files]). The purpose of that is for backward app compatibility -future work should definitely avoid the use of that.  Anyway I'm pretty sure that Windows Server 2003 R2 is in active support until December 2015.

I like the idea of <vendor>\<app>\<version> too, but one of my goals was to have the ability to symlink the current version to a predictable well-known-path, and I'd like to use the same pattern for all aspects of location determination. (web apps, desktop apps, libraries, docs, etc)

I've sketched out some ideas:

The first (under option1), was my original idea-well-known-path points to a specific sibling version. This is nice,  predictable, and easy to change a path somewhere to switch over to a specific version if required, otherwise the 'unversioned' path is authoritative. This is similar to common conventions in Linux.

The second (under option2) doesn't present an obvious way to have an authoritative version, short of making a 'current' symlink in the same directory.

The third (under option3) is kind of a compromise-there still is an authoritative version, and all the different versions roll up under a common directory.  I'm not very keen on it, but it's not bad.


+---option1
|   +---openssl         -- symlink to openssl-0.98j
|   +---openssl-0.98i
|   +---openssl-0.98j
|   +---zlib            -- symlink to zlib-1.23
|   +---zlib-1.23
|   +---zlib-1.25
|
+---option2
|   +---openssl
|   |   +---0.98i
|   |   +---0.98j
|   +---zlib
|       +---1.23
|       +---1.25
|
+---option3
    +---openssl         -- symlink to [openssl]\0.98j
    +---zlib            -- symlink to [zlib]\1.25
    +---[openssl]
    |   +---0.98i
    |   +---0.98j
    +---[zlib]
        +---1.23
        +---1.25


Ideas?

Garrett Serack | Open Source Software Developer | Microsoft Corporation
I don't make the software you use; I make the software you use better on Windows.

From: coapp-developers-bounces+garretts=microsoft.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:coapp-developers-bounces+garretts=microsoft.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rivera, Rafael
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 6:46 PM
To: coapp-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Coapp-developers] Another kind of package

I'm new to the conversation, so I don't have quoted material -- apologies.

Program Files\ hosting
Starting with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, we have virtualization that silently takes over and redirects (for appcompat reasons) writes to the caller's virtual application store. With Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 fading away, is hosting in Program Files\ really a problem? I think we can safely assume that users with this type of virtualization turned off within the candidate OSes are super advanced/asking for trouble and therefore shouldn't be considered in the design process. It's impossible to please everyone.

Directory structure
I like Elizabeth's approach of dropping versions (e.g. 1.0, 1.1) into an authoritative <vendor>\<app> folder. I'd imagine this is neater, especially when dealing with faster updating applications (or lots of installed applications).

/rafael