Wraith

Express downloads at: http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/ Just thought someone might like to add a news item

Just a heads-up (aka procrastinating from study) XPlode 2.00 is in the planning stage. There will be a large rewrite of the code, which will result in a lot of things changing, such as plugins. Here's the list of planned changes: XPlode Core module - this will be the only closed-source part of XPlode, and will be distributed in binary form. It will contain the parsing of XML and storage of items, amongst other things. Completely new "effects" plugin API - controls execution of commands etc. This will be using standard C++ types, so development of plugins will need to be done with C++. A new "interaction" plugin API, one plugin for execution - it will control the display of the XPlode window, which things get installed, and when. Essentially a GUI frontend to the XPlode functionality. Completely unattended or completely attended, depending on the plugin you use. A new website redesign - I'll be talking to the volunteers in the next week on what possibilities we have. Documentation! Yes, I know, it's been begging to be done for a heck of a long time, so now, with the coming version, there will be usage docs, as well as development docs. If anyone feels anything needs adding to, PM me, and I'll add it here. Development starting: Wed 30th June Expected release: Week starting July 26th Edit: Just changed the start date... figured I'd start now Also changed supported languages to just C++ - it's going to be too much of a hassle to get things working, and keep them working, if I have to support s***ty datatypes..

Now why don't I get nice people like that for XPlode?

Ahhhh... some coders. Good, I was hoping there were some smart people here Just kidding Coders are useful though, helps sometimes when somebody else goes over my code. Sometimes they point out logic errors that I don't see. jdgordon: USyd. 3rd year, B E (Mechatronic/Space Engineering). Getting ready to screw up exams. Yay me

Heh. Coding I can handle, but only when I'm on breaks from uni. i.e. All of July. That's why I want to get this done as soon as possible, but after my exams. Whcih start tomorrow. Ugh. Kill me now.

Read the comments in the <config> block within the XML that came with XPlode. They explain how to achieve it.

Note that these two variables are only accessible with XPlode.

You can't specify multiple programs per command. Split them up. You will also have to look at the nowait="true" attribute for one of them - XPlode waits for a program to completely finish by default. If you add the nowait attribute, it will execute the program, then go onto the next one.

I have a feeling this has to do with the CD specification, rather than XPlode itself. There's nothing in XPlode that is supposed to change the casing of the files. I don't really have a fix for you, sorry. Try extracting them from a rar or something?

Save the file as unicode. If the problem still exists, then I'll have a look at it. The zip file on the server has a non-unicode XML in it, and if you've edited this file directly, it won't work.

Eh? XPlode is just a program that installs things, much like the way you have in the screenshot you posted. It's not limited to just during installation. The only thing you'd need to change is moving the registry entries to XML, and setting up XPlode to run whenever.

No self promotion here, but go check XPlode and the XPlode Forums.

Intriguing. I was going to write something like this after I'd cleaned up XPlode. I'll have a look at it and see whether I still should

The only GUI I envisage that would be "useful" (using the term loosely) would be something that modifies the *.ini - it's almost completely non-interactive, so there's little to no use for a GUI.

Ummm... is there a point to this post?

Okay, some of you may have noticed that I haven't been around much, due to exams. (I know, it's a bit hard to spot, but it's true, I haven't been here! ) I plan to do a large-scale recreation of most of XPlode/XPdeploy in early July. However, rather than one person doing everything, I'm going to shift it to a larger dev-base. What this means is, I need: Module coders Website maintainer(s) Documentation writer(s) etc. If you feel you're up to doing something, post here or drop me a msg/email. As I had mentioned before, I cannot release the full XPlode source due to licensing. What I've decided to do is build a "core" module, which shall be distributed as a binary. All plugins / display modules etc. will be open-source. I am going to try and break down the modules as much as possible, while still maintaining usability. This will probably mean a week or so for me to split/clean up everything, but should result in something that people can work with. At the moment, I envisage the only closed portion being the XML parser, and the storage mechanism. This means that if you want to write a display module that uses a flash interface and has selectability, there should be no reason why it cannot be done. Look here for more notes in the coming weeks, when I work out the logistics.

I tend to use mountvol for mounting a seperate partition under C:\Program Files - I don't usually do it unattended as the identifiers change each time I change the partitioning scheme. It would be possible to do this unattended, but with data at stake, I prefer to screw things up manually

If tehre is a need, I can modify the parser to allow for things such as & etc. That is, if it's not already in there. Not entirely sure if the parser I have uses that already. Unfortunately, I've looked through the code, talked with the boss, and have come to the decision that parts of the code I just simply cannot release source to. I'm going to try and make as much as possible into seperate DLL's, but there will more than likely be one or two things that I'll just have to provide a binary for. I'm thinking that right now, the current setup is OK, and I'll jsut add a "display" DLL for the interface. The parsing and stuff doesn't really need modification, and the source of the plugins will be released, so you SHOULD be able to do a lot of things, if needed. Expect a new post in about a week when I've figured out logistics. Would be earlier, but I have exams in a couple of weeks, so time is limited.

The #1# is where the username is "injected". There is no syntax for adding the password. They can be removed if you aren't using those functions. You can remove them and still run them, it would just show up blank. *shrugs* Yes. Seems ok to me - I think the example XML already has a "copy i386" item already. EDIT: remove the *.* in each, and add mask="*.*" to the attributes of each tag. That one I don't have an answer for. Nah, it's not too much

What iso are you starting with? All normal ISOs are generally fine...

The automatically downloaded version is corrupt or something. When I drop in the exe downloaded from windows update, there's no problem. I'll have a look in greater detail tonight if this hasn't been resolved.

I've seen a 44GB CD... Kinda useless because it was pretty much the same file over and over again, but then again, proofs of concept can be like that

There's a forum for site-specific issues.

Subdomain sites don't seem to be working. Give it a while.

After I finish exams the whole renderer will be rewritten. Think completely customisable HTML/CSS interface. Should be.... interesting ;-) As for T-39, I doubt XPdeploy would run, due to the fact that it embeds IE into the window. As far as I know, at that point, IE isn't even installed, so it probably wouldn't run. Adding registry items at that point may not work either, I don't know if the initial registries are written properly. I know the hives are loaded at the end of text-mode, but as for whether programs can access it yet, I've no idea. I should point out though, I'm guessing here, so if you can prove otherwise, do so.