msi ole automation: where to next?

[Dan Kegel]

On 5/21/07, Misha Koshelev <mk144210 at bcm.edu> wrote:
> I guess what I am still concerned about is this blurb from an email Mike
> McCormack had sent me when I started working on the scripting/automation
> stuff:
>
> > The work that I was doing is aimed at running custom action threads in
> > a separate process.  It will require the OLE interfaces
> > (Session/Installer) to be working before the custom actions can run
> > out of process.  The custom action queue needs to be exposed by
> > another OLE interface so that msiexec can query it.
>
> Now I really don't understand this or whether this is still the plan for
> custom actions (James?)

It's still the plan, and James is going to be working on it.

> or why having custom action threads in a
> separate process would require Session and Installer to be working at
> all, since they are mostly just wrappers around the C functions, which
> seem to be much easier to call from another C program like msiexec than
> the automation functions. However, I want to make sure that the full
> Installer/Session functionality is not required by something like this
> that could potentially improve more than just scripting support before I
> completely move on to something else...

I'm sure James can fill you in.  (FWIW, James, my druthers would be that
you have a good look at the Autocad 2000/2002/2004 installer problems
before diving in on the msi comification task.  I'll bring the discs
in tomorrow.)
- Dan