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

[Bob Arnson]

1. Didn’t know that was a thing, so I have no opinion on whether that's a good/bad/indifferent restriction.
2. Does dutil need to care? BundleGetBundleInfo returns only strings today, so I'd assume that'd be good enough for non-BA users. BAs could request explicit types and we haven't discussed any kind of authoring level of support for this feature.

-----Original Message-----
From: wix-devs <wix-devs-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> On Behalf Of Sean Hall via wix-devs
Sent: Tuesday, 4 May, 2021 15:33
To: WiX Toolset Developer Mailing List <wix-devs at lists.wixtoolset.org>
Cc: Sean Hall <r.sean.hall at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [wix-devs] WIXBUG3704 - Allow access to persisted variables from related bundles

That would require that persisted variables can't have their type dynamically changed at runtime. Maybe this is reasonable, but it's a restriction that doesn't exist today.

That doesn't really work when querying outside of the original bundle. I think it can be argued that the querier should be required to ask for a specific type instead of tracking it in the registry, but that would require the dutil API to know how to do Burn variable coercion.

On Tue, May 4, 2021, 14:17 Bob Arnson via wix-devs < wix-devs at lists.wixtoolset.org> wrote:

> 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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