Automatic installation rev-eng utility

[Shachar Shemesh]

Hi all,

I said this in a reply in one of the threads (the one about Windows 
registry), and got zero reply. I'm bringing the subject up again here.

Back in 1996 (and until around 2000) I was project manager for a project 
called "GTFormat". This was a project used by the late Packard Bell, as 
well as NEC in Japan, to put the programs bundled with the machines on 
the hard disks shipped out to customers. The tools consist of a tool 
that understands what the original installation did, a database to do 
offline conflict resolution and other stuff, and a front end to perform 
a (silent) installation of the result. I have written most of the code 
in the last part of this project, and as I said before, managed the 
entire thing. We also had a tool the generated files for the last part 
directly from the first part, without going through the database.

Now, the tool was written when I was an employee of the company that 
produced them (G.Tek Technologies, today called gteko), but I believe 
that given enough persuasion I can get their approval to either freely 
distribute or actually open source the detection and the installation 
tool. I believe most of the distinguishing value of the tool as far as 
Gteko is concerned is in the database, which is not relevant for Wine in 
any way.

The tool is written mostly in C++ for Visual Studio 6. It may require 
pulling out a single proprietary library (compression), but should not 
pose a problem (zlib does a wonderful job, after all).

The question, therefor, is this. Should I try? The tool has proven 
itself over a long period of time, and is fairly reliable (at least was 
back at the time). It CAN solve some of our installer related problems. 
Your opinions are welcome.

So, what say you?

Shachar

[Brian Vincent]

On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 22:09:54 +0200, Shachar Shemesh
 wrote:
> the hard disks shipped out to customers. The tools consist of a tool
> that understands what the original installation did, a database to do
> offline conflict resolution and other stuff, and a front end to perform
> a (silent) installation of the result. I have written most of the code

Putting on my sys admin hat that hasn't been worn in a long time...

Yeah, I think this would be useful.  Here's an example of why:

I tried running the current Word Viewer 2003 install program it failed
with MSI errors.  I simply tried copying over the installation
directory from a Windows partition but it didn't work.  Well, at that
point I could either corrupt my clean Wine install with a native MSI,
or I could try to sort out what the install program does on Windows. 
I used a program called InstallSpy 2.0 from 2BrightSparks to figure
out what the install program did.  I noticed it dumped some files in
c:\Program Files\Common Files\blah\blah\blah.  'Lo and behold, as soon
as I copied that folder over to my fake Windows drive, Word Viewer
worked just fine.  All in all, I probably spent about 15 minutes on
the solution and avoided native MSI.

Now, a program that monitored a Windows install, copied all of the
files created, generated a .reg file with registry changes, noted INI
file changes, and then built an RPM that would install on Linux.. that
would be cool.

-Brian

[Shachar Shemesh]

Brian Vincent wrote:
> Now, a program that monitored a Windows install, copied all of the
> files created, generated a .reg file with registry changes, noted INI
> file changes, and then built an RPM that would install on Linux.. that
> would be cool.
>
> -Brian

Thinking about it, maybe it would be easier to write one than to get my 
ex-boss to change copyright on the existing tool + renovate it. Also, as 
the current tool is C++, it is bound to be an external tool anyways.

Hmm....

Shachar