Undo and version control

garyk · Postby **garyk** » Tue Apr 13, 2010 12:21 am

After using Install Aware for more then a year I find it an almost excelent tool if not for 2 major lacking features which make it a rather poor tool if you are a professional developer.
I hope install aware publish this topic and take note of it.
1) Undo. It is unimaginable that I can not undo my actions. If I delete something by mistake I am done for. Its unconcievable that this feature is missing.
2) The enigmatic file formats install aware use make it impractical to use with version control. All our code is under version control except for the installer. As a professional software developer that must support different versions of our products, this reason alone will make us convert to another installer technology as soon as we can allocate the resources to rewrite our installers. The install aware project files MUST be in human readable format (e.g XML) so that diffs can be made between versions and changes can be made to the files manually.
I wish Install Aware would add these features ASAP and bring this tool to its full potential.
Regards
Gary

MichaelNesmith · Postby **MichaelNesmith** » Tue Apr 13, 2010 2:32 am

But, we do have undo in InstallAware 9 onwards

Sounds like its time for you to upgrade

garyk · Postby **garyk** » Tue Apr 13, 2010 5:10 am

Ahh. Good step in the right direction

When is a human readable file format planned?
Regards

garyk · Postby **garyk** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 1:20 pm

Dear Michael
Before I spend $1000 on the undo feature, I'd like to know if its what I hope for.
Can you please advise, does the undo apply to all possible actions and what is the maximum number of undo actions?
Thanks
Gary

MichaelNesmith · Postby **MichaelNesmith** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 5:46 pm

All MSIcode editor actions.

No undo/redo limit

However, switching to the Visual Designers will clear the history.

ALive · Postby **ALive** » Mon Apr 26, 2010 9:01 am

And what about 2-nd request? imo, it is much more important than just undo?

I mean the readable human format (XML would be best of all), with the availability to perform team development but not just the solo development.
Current file format does not allow you to perform a "merge" (usually called action all over the VCSs) action of changes made by two separate developers on a certain project. Same with localizations.
I also noticed that *.mpr file spontaneously grow for up to 2000 empty lines and in such way it get shorter (2000 lines is the amount of strings in the code as i noticed). Watching diff results on *.mia files does not make any sense. The changes are chaotic and cannot be understood, unless you are familiar with the algorithm of this file format generator.

I really hope that something will be done in this way, because we have no other choice but a total rewrite of our Installers on other technologies.
The lack of Unicode and availability of Team Development is a serious setback for us now with InstallAware (after more than a year of using it). Our needs are growing and we need more than just one developer involved on a certain project to speed up development.

garyk · Postby **garyk** » Mon Apr 26, 2010 9:35 am

Indeed
IMHO Install Aware could never become an enterprise grade product until it starts using a human readable file format.

jsmith · Postby **jsmith** » Wed Apr 28, 2010 12:08 pm

Starting with IA9 (I think), you'll notice that for each .mia file in your project directory there is a corresponding .mia.txt file. This file is a dump of what you see on the screen in the MSIcode view of the IA GUI for your setup scripts. If you keep these files in source control, they aid in diffing. While this is far from the ideal world of having the script files be human readable, we've found the .txt files to be pretty useful compared to what it was like before they existed.

garyk · Postby **garyk** » Wed Apr 28, 2010 2:25 pm

Thanks JSmith.
I am just not sure if that is good enough or I have to move to a different technology.
If IA would have announced if and what they are planning in making the script files human readable and give a release date I could at least plan, but without knowing anything I have to assume they have no such plans.