coapp-developers team mailing list archive

[Garrett Serack <garretts@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Howdy Eric,

Well, it all depends on what you're good at, and where you want to contribute.

Elizabeth Smith owns the coapp-engine (which is the shared library dll that handles all the 'smarts' at t the client) It's probably the largest single piece. It's being written in pure C and linked against only libraries that are on the platform by default to keep the size down.  Useful skills: knowledge of MSI APIs, ESE).  She would probably welcome some help once she uploads the skeleton for the API itself.

I own:
The developer toolchain-we are building the tools to adapt *any* C/C++ build into a clean, consistent build process for VC10 (and others, eventually)
The tools for that are:
     Trace(Rafael is building this in C) ,
     Scan(Trevor is building this in C#),
     mkSpec(*, C#),  takes data from trace, scan, and the developer to build a compiler independent representation of what it takes to build a particular output
     mkProject(*, C#), creates VC10 project files from mkSpec files

The packaging toolchain-the tools to take a project's output, correctly create manifest files, and automate the packaging with WiX.
Those tools are:
     SmartManifest(*, C#) - generates a manifest file and embeds it into the binary. (should pull config info from the spec file)
     mkPackage(*, C#) - creates those ever-so-complicated MSI files by creating WiX scripts and running them thru WiX.

The bootstrapper that gets embedded into every MSI which installs and launches the coapp-engine to do the actual work. I'm gonna get this done for the first release on Aug 16.

Tools with * are by default assigned to me... but good fun for anyone.

And, I'm also setting up the project release scripts that generate the official MSIs for everything.

There are a few things that are really farther down the road (Visual Studio integration,etc) that are really kinda hard to get done without having the earlier stuff done.

If you are a wizard with WiX and/or MSIs mkPackage is a good place to start (I'd have to give you a brain dump to explain the specifics).
If you are prefer to work with native code, I'm sure Elizabeth could use help with the engine.

We tend to hang out on irc on irc.freenode.net/#coapp .

G
From: coapp-developers-bounces+garretts=microsoft.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:coapp-developers-bounces+garretts=microsoft.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Eric Schultz
Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2010 11:38 AM
To: coapp-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Coapp-developers] Getting Involved

Garrett and gang,

I've been meaning to actually get involved in developing CoApp over the summer so now I'm actually going to do it! Are there any particular areas/sub-projects that need addressing? Basically I'm asking, what do you need someone to code?

Eric