msi ole automation: where to next?

[Misha Koshelev]

On Mon, 2007-05-21 at 10:05 -0700, Dan Kegel wrote:
> 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

I guess the bottom line is I don't mind eventually implementing _all_
the automation functions as long as I know that I'm not just wasting my
time (i.e., if these actions are only required by installer scripts, and
I bet most installer scripts do not even use most of the functions).

Misha