2008/7/27 Scott Ritchie scott@open-vote.org:
Just a crazy thought, but...
What if we created a standard for passing some sort of wine-specific metadata in an MSI file? Windows would ignore it, but application developers could use it to include some helpful Linux-specific Wine instructions like what windows version to use, a custom .desktop file, or even instructions to install into a completely independent Wine prefix.
This way, a single .msi file could be a true universal installer for both Windows machines and Linux machines. Moreover, there'd be less of a need to create custom Wine packages for applications like Picassa since a lot of that functionality would be abstracted into Wine itself.
Thoughts?
That sounds interesting.
The main MSI data is essentially just a database. Other people provide their own extensions, for example, InstallShield have their own extensions to support self-registration of DLL's via (something like) _IISSelfReg and _IISSelfUnReg tables.
I don't see why we can't add things like X11Desktop tables and the like.
@Markus: It would be easier for Windows-specific vendors to update MSI files than it would for them to learn, support and test package manager-based installs. Also, native Linux packages don't have support for things like registering COM components, adding registry data and other Windows-specific tasks.
How many people will add support for this, I don't know. Maybe this is something the CrossOver team could do as part of their migration/support service for vendors ^_^.
- Reece