[wix-devs] WIXBUG3704 - Allow access to persisted variables from related bundles

[Bob Arnson]

BAs already have to specify a type when getting a variable value from the engine. The engine knows a variable's type when it persists the value -- so what if it required a variable to exist so it had the type when reading it? At that point, the registry type could be REG_SZ for everything, no encoding necessary.

-----Original Message-----
From: wix-devs <wix-devs-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> On Behalf Of Rob Mensching via wix-devs
Sent: Tuesday, 4 May, 2021 14:13
To: WiX Toolset Developer Mailing List <wix-devs at lists.wixtoolset.org>; Ron Martin <cpuwzd at comcast.net>
Cc: Rob Mensching <rob at firegiant.com>
Subject: Re: [wix-devs] WIXBUG3704 - Allow access to persisted variables from related bundles

Sorry, I mentioned encoding the values in a string the way the Windows Installer does in the Registry table to include it as an option. I do not have a strong opinion that it is the best way to go (although encoding in JSON or XML seems way overkill). Trying to reuse the built-in registry types is noble if you can resolve all the issues Sean was discussing.

-----Original Message-----
From: wix-devs <wix-devs-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> On Behalf Of Hoover, Jacob via wix-devs
Sent: Tuesday, May 4, 2021 10:02 AM
To: Ron Martin <cpuwzd at comcast.net>; wix-devs <wix-devs at lists.wixtoolset.org>
Cc: Hoover, Jacob <Jacob.Hoover at greenheck.com>
Subject: Re: [wix-devs] WIXBUG3704 - Allow access to persisted variables from related bundles

Unrecognized types?  The engine only supports a fixed set of types. Extensions can’t define additional variable types.

“Much easier” is an opinion.

If we really want to go the string route, why not use a JSON object in the registry?  We could then define it’s type and value, still live as a string, and have a well defined structure to validate against.

From: Ron Martin <cpuwzd at comcast.net>
Sent: Tuesday, May 4, 2021 11:51 AM
To: Hoover, Jacob <Jacob.Hoover at greenheck.com>; wix-devs <wix-devs at lists.wixtoolset.org>
Subject: Re: [wix-devs] WIXBUG3704 - Allow access to persisted variables from related bundles


Some of the things I thought about before making my suggestion:

If all of the strings we store in the registry (in this context) are differentiated by their first character, many new types can be added later if necessary. A single switch statement can be used to separate the type. Unrecognized types can be passed through extensions.

The registry was not designed for flexibility or extensibility. Binary data can be organized for straight-forward decoding, just as string data, but for debugging purposes, it is much easier to decode strings than raw binary representation of multiple data structures.

Registry strings should not be used to store binary data in its raw form because there is a potential for truncation when a null character is encountered. Registry strings are constrained to UTF-16 with no encoding prefix.

Ron
On 5/4/2021 11:27 AM, Hoover, Jacob wrote:
easier to handle.

From: wix-devs <wix-devs-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org><mailto:wix-devs-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> On Behalf Of Ron Martin via wix-devs
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2021 2:49 PM
To: wix-devs at lists.wixtoolset.org<mailto:wix-devs at lists.wixtoolset.org>
Cc: Ron Martin <cpuwzd at comcast.net><mailto:cpuwzd at comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [wix-devs] WIXBUG3704 - Allow access to persisted variables from related bundles
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