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Joveler

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1 hour ago, misty said:

I have been working on updating the MistyPE documentation to include the latest project updates and using PEBakery in addition to WinBuilder. Latest (and hopefully final) draft is available - http://mistyprojects.co.uk/mistype/beta/doc_update_pebakery/readme.html. Comments welcome - particularly if they are positive ;).

Great articles, Misty!

Regarding instructions, how about adding "How to export logs"?
Logs are fundamental for troubleshooting, both for MistyPE and PEBakery.

1 hour ago, misty said:

I'm like to include the next release of PEBakery (with the above fix) in the MistyPE download package once it's been tested - any thoughts?

It would be a honor to me PEBakery to be distributed with MistyPE.

I introduced many fix in christmas release, for example showing line number in error log, fixing System,RefreshInterface to work properly in script.project, etc.
If you find an error or new ideas, please let me know.

 

EDIT
How do you think about Launcher.exe's target framework?
Launcher now detects installed .Net Framework's version and warn user to install lastest framework, but launcher itself requires .Net Framework.
I lowered the target to 4.6.2 temporary (since Launcher.exe used that version before), but I am willing to lower more if it is necessary.
You can refer to this article to determine adequate version.

Edited by Joveler
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@Joveler
I look forward to testing the new build. I will respond more fully in a few days - the household Christmas preparations/celebrations are about to start with the Christmas Eve church service and a ban has been imposed on my computer use over the festive period.

Looks like am impressive number of fixes and additions in the latest build.

Happy Christmas

Misty

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3 hours ago, Joveler said:

- Fix FileBox to handle root directory path correctly.
- ShellExecute's Standard Output Redirect TextBox will be autoscrolled.

The FileBox root path fix makes the SE "Copy to USB device" script work, very nice! I also like the autoscroll in the ShellExecute output, and the line numbers in the log!

A nice Christmax gift, looks like your original plan of having a "working version" by December (this is close enough to beta for me!) worked out...

Thank you!

Edited by Atari800XL
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@ Joveler

About this:

Quote

Launcher now detects installed .Net Framework's version and warn user to install lastest framework, but launcher itself requires .Net Framework.
I lowered the target to 4.6.2 temporary (since Launcher.exe used that version before), but I am willing to lower more if it is necessary.
You can refer to this article to determine adequate version.

I respect your decition, but since you ask for comments I suggest lower the NET warn to 4.0 wich I think is more comon since having version from XP to all new sistems it makes sence to me (I always had it installed since XP times).

 

alacran

Edited by alacran
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Quick post before I go out for more Christmas activities.

MistyPE updated and is available from - http://mistyprojects.co.uk/download.htm

The amazing PEBakery (Build 20171225) is included in the download. Thank you Joveler :worship:

Changelog - http://mistyprojects.co.uk/mistype/mistype.docs/readme.files/Changelog.txt

It is not possible to update from within the project so you will need to download the full project package - sorry.

Misty

P.s. More later - I still haven't responded to Joveler's update.

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On ‎24‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 5:32 PM, Joveler said:

Great articles, Misty!

Regarding instructions, how about adding "How to export logs"?
Logs are fundamental for troubleshooting, both for MistyPE and PEBakery.

Thank you for the positive feedback. Brief information about exporting logs has been added as suggested. The updated instructions are in the new MistyPE (build 2017.12.26) download and online (http://mistyprojects.co.uk/mistype/mistype.docs/readme.html  and http://mistyprojects.co.uk/mistype/mistype.docs/readme.files/instructions_pebakery.htm#basics). 

On ‎24‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 5:32 PM, Joveler said:

It would be a honor to me PEBakery to be distributed with MistyPE

Done. Trust me, the honour is mine. Thank you for consent to distribute PEBakery, and also for the vast amount of your time that I suspect you have already put into it.

On ‎24‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 5:32 PM, Joveler said:

How do you think about Launcher.exe's target framework?
Launcher now detects installed .Net Framework's version and warn user to install lastest framework, but launcher itself requires .Net Framework.
I lowered the target to 4.6.2 temporary (since Launcher.exe used that version before), but I am willing to lower more if it is necessary.
You can refer to this article to determine adequate version.

I do not know enough about .NET to comment on this. I rarely have anything other than OS included .NET version on my systems and on the rare occasions that I've installed a different version I've usually reverted to a clean OS backup soon after. It's an indication of how much I've been enjoying and value PEBakery I may have to keep .NET permanently installed :thumbup

On ‎24‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 5:32 PM, Joveler said:

I introduced many fix in christmas release, for example showing line number in error log, fixing System,RefreshInterface to work properly in script.project, etc.
If you find an error or new ideas, please let me know.

The fixes are very much appreciated - particularly the two mentioned above. I have not found any errors so far. In regards to new ideas on the other hand, you may regret asking that!

Some thoughts and suggestions for now.

Where doees PEBakery go from here?
From my own selfish point of view I'd love PEBakery to continue to provide backwards compatibility with WinBuilder. Ideally I'd like the same MistyPE to continue to run on both builders, whilst still taking advantage of any new commands and features that are implemented in PEBakery. Unlike others, I am not looking for a WinBuilder replacement. WinBuilder has some advantages over PEBakery - think older operating systems and also where it might not be practical to install the .NET dependencies. I very much see the two builders as complimenting each other in regards to MistyPE.

A feature request that would facilitate this is a means of checking from a script whether it's running on PEBakery. Apologies if this is already implemented - I'm late to this party and am playing catchup. My suggestion would be setting an environment variable automatically if PEBakery is running that can be checked in all projects? Let's say for example that a variable %PEBakery% is automatically set as YES, then a project script could run commands that are specific to PEBakery without causing errors in WinBuilder. E.g. -

If,%PEBakery%,Equal,YES,Begin
   mycommands
End
Else,Begin
   mycommands
End

Native wim support
All Windows from Vista up have been distributed using the Windows Imaging Format. If PEBakery is being released as a Windows PE builder, then native .wim support via PEBakery commands would be very useful.

MistyPE can continue to use ShellExecute commands to call wimlib-imagex.exe, however if it's possible to add native commands for .wim support via the wimlib library (libwim-15.dll - see https://wimlib.net/apidoc/index.html) then this would be useful across multiple projects. Whilst 7-zip may provide some .wim support, Eric's work is in my opinion the industry standard.


PEBakery Roadmap
In your own words, "...PEBakery works as a drop-in replacement of WB082...". In MistyPE this would appear to have been achieved following the correction of some scripting/syntax errors that I had not picked up on that were running in WinBuilder (and probably shouldn't have been). 

From the information I've so far skimmed, not all WinBuilder commands have been fully implemented. Please can you let us know what you plan to concentrate on to avoid you being bombarded with feature requests. For example are you wanting to focus on tests/bug fixes, or documentation, or full WinBuilder compatibility, etc.

Also, PEBakery is being discussed across multiple sites/forums including here at MSFN, and reboot.pro, and theoven.org and mdl. Where would YOU prefer posts to be made?

Fantastic work. My last suggestion would be to consider calling this a Beta release rather than Alpha.

:worship:

Kind regards,

Misty

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Misty, to detect running on PEBakery, here's a quote from Joveler (taken from an older release):

%EngineVersion% for integer version (Ex 090), %PEBakeryVersion% for string version (Ex 0.9.0 alpha) was added.
In current version, it is recommend to use %EngineVersion% to detect PEBakery.

 

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1 hour ago, misty said:

A feature request that would facilitate this is a means of checking from a script whether it's running on PEBakery. Apologies if this is already implemented - I'm late to this party and am playing catchup. My suggestion would be setting an environment variable automatically if PEBakery is running that can be checked in all projects? Let's say for example that a variable %PEBakery% is automatically set as YES, then a project script could run commands that are specific to PEBakery without causing errors in WinBuilder. E.g. -


If,%PEBakery%,Equal,YES,Begin
   mycommands
End
Else,Begin
   mycommands
End

 

If I may, this is philosophically and philologically "wrong".

EITHER PEBakery is (or will become) a "drop in" replacement for Winbuilder OR it is not (and it will not become) one.

What I mean is the risk of creating a sort of Winbuilder "dialect" that PEbakery will understand whilst Winbuilder won't, 

You (Misty) and probably a bunch of other good people will have the sensibility to write (and maintain) their .scripts in such a way that they will work with both builders, but most will "choose" (for whatever reason) the one or the other (or will not willingly choose one but by chance or whatever will adopt the one but not the other) created (if there was not enough of it) some more direct or indirect reasons for divisions and quarrels.

Mind you, I am still, in my perverted mind, of the opinion that the full all-round compatibility check for PEbakery, once successful is (or will be) the first step to have in the future a "better" scripting language.

The till now exceptionally good syntax interpreting of PEbakery (and the possibility of directly run succcesfully "pure" Winbuilder .scripts) is what makes me hope that it will be able to achieve this goal.

Temporarily, and while joveler is refining/completing/debugging it, it is of course fine to use "specific provisions" to workaround any issue, but it shouldn't be something that becomes a "habit".

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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1 hour ago, Atari800XL said:

Misty, to detect running on PEBakery, here's a quote from Joveler (taken from an older release):

Thanks my friend. And that's why it's useful to ask instead of trawling through lots of posts on different sites. :thumbup

58 minutes ago, jaclaz said:

If I may, this is philosophically and philologically "wrong".

EITHER PEBakery is (or will become) a "drop in" replacement for Winbuilder OR it is not (and it will not become) one.

What I mean is the risk of creating a sort of Winbuilder "dialect" that PEbakery will understand whilst Winbuilder won't, 

I think it can be both. Obviously that will ultimately be up to Joveler.

Having looked at topics on theoven.org there seems to be a strong emphasis there on trashing all things winbuilder and moving forwards with the new builder and introducing new commands to replace their macro library. I get the impression that breaking WinBuilder compatibility might actually be one of the goals in mind! Some of the new commands may well be useful for all and PEBakery looks like it's already evolving from WinBuilder - a builder that hasn't had any development for a number of years.

These new commands might already result in WinBuilder errors if a project is not coded to build on what are ultimately two separate platforms that are likely to increasingly diverge. That does not mean to say that PEBakery cannot become a full drop in replacement for Winbuilder, just that if you want a project to work in both builders and take advantage of new features in PEBakery then a workaround of some sort will be required.

My own wish would be for new PEBakery and WinBuilder commands that replace all of the external programs currently required in MistyPE. That is not going to happen with WinBuilder as Peter and Nuno do not appear to have any plans to continue development. Some of the commands currently dependent on external programs may well be implemented in PEBakery in the future and I'd personally like to take advantage of this whilst ensuring that MistyPE still works on WinBuilder - which still works on Windows XP and without .NET!

The fact that WinBuilder still works at all is testament to the work that went into it.

1 hour ago, jaclaz said:

but most will "choose" (for whatever reason) the one or the other (or will not willingly choose one but by chance or whatever will adopt the one but not the other) created (if there was not enough of it) some more direct or indirect reasons for divisions and quarrels.

I think that this is likely and possibly inevitable.

1 hour ago, jaclaz said:

Mind you, I am still, in my perverted mind, of the opinion that the full all-round compatibility check for PEbakery, once successful is (or will be) the first step to have in the future a "better" scripting language.

The till now exceptionally good syntax interpreting of PEbakery (and the possibility of directly run succcesfully "pure" Winbuilder .scripts) is what makes me hope that it will be able to achieve this goal.

We can but dream. Just remember though, that compared to the WinBuilder 201X release the old/legacy WinBuilder is human readable!

1 hour ago, jaclaz said:

Temporarily, and while joveler is refining/completing/debugging it, it is of course fine to use "specific provisions" to workaround any issue, but it shouldn't be something that becomes a "habit".

In the case of MistyPE, lots of external programs are already used as workarounds due to the limitations of WinBuilder. PEBakery has drawn my attention to a number of syntax errors that have been cleaned up - for the good of both builders. The only significant change has been coding to take account of a 64-bit builder. As WinBuilder is 32-bit only a workaround was implemented to account for sysnative redirects when copying files from a 64-bit Host OS - in PEBakery the redirects were not required. 

The good news is that with the release of PEBakery there is now a future to WinBuilder - a new/easier scripting language would be a great future goal.

Misty
 

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11 hours ago, misty said:

Having looked at topics on theoven.org there seems to be a strong emphasis there on trashing all things winbuilder and moving forwards with the new builder and introducing new commands to replace their macro library. I get the impression that breaking WinBuilder compatibility might actually be one of the goals in mind! Some of the new commands may well be useful for all and PEBakery looks like it's already evolving from WinBuilder - a builder that hasn't had any development for a number of years.

Really? :w00t:

How queer and surprising! ;)

11 hours ago, misty said:

We can but dream. Just remember though, that compared to the WinBuilder 201X release the old/legacy WinBuilder is human readable!
 

Sure :), just like - say -  Demotic is much more readable than Hieroglyphs, but the point was about my hope for some new Greek, and JFYI:

http://reboot.pro/topic/3380-sounds-arabic-for-me/

http://reboot.pro/topic/3380-sounds-arabic-for-me/?p=24277

BTW, and as a side-side note, the use of external programs, unless you are a computer science guru pontificating on how other people should write programs[1] is just some of the usual fluff, with no merit, there is nothing bad or good in using external programs or in not using them.

If an external program exists, does what is supposed to do and does it well, there is no reason to re-implement it internally if not saving a few microseconds or milliseconds.

And, as I already said, it is not that having a few seconds savings in a build actually makes that much a difference for the most part of the audience of the builder (while having a language that is simple, powerful and understandable may [2] make a difference).

jaclaz

[1] I mean programs that actually do something useful. 

[2] I am an optimist, and I still believe that removing the initial steep learning path (or at least smoth it down a bit) may contribute to have more people involved. :dubbio:

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23 hours ago, misty said:

A feature request that would facilitate this is a means of checking from a script whether it's running on PEBakery. Apologies if this is already implemented - I'm late to this party and am playing catchup. My suggestion would be setting an environment variable automatically if PEBakery is running that can be checked in all projects? Let's say for example that a variable %PEBakery% is automatically set as YES, then a project script could run commands that are specific to PEBakery without causing errors in WinBuilder.

Developers can make use of newly added %PEBakery% fixed variable.

If,ExistVar,%PEBakery%,Begin
If,%PEBakery%,Equal,True
,Begin

Use these directive to detect PEBakery's presence, it would be way more better and readable than %EngineVersion%.

22 hours ago, jaclaz said:

Mind you, I am still, in my perverted mind, of the opinion that the full all-round compatibility check for PEbakery, once successful is (or will be) the first step to have in the future a "better" scripting language.

The till now exceptionally good syntax interpreting of PEbakery (and the possibility of directly run succcesfully "pure" Winbuilder .scripts) is what makes me hope that it will be able to achieve this goal.

I partially agree using this kind of branch in projects is a bit dirty, but currently there are no other way to make use of PEBakery's advaned feature before designing new language.
Even after new language is released, rewriting all .script file is too tedious, and currently I do not expect writing one-to-one converter can be done in short term (WB syntax is... a quite ambigious, making conversion too hard). So it is natural to think many people will continue to use WB syntax for a seeable future, then why not give developers a way to use advanced features.

For example, many people are using python 2 right now even python 3 was released about 10 years ago, and at a result python 2 provides part of python 3's features via __future__ module and still being maintained.

23 hours ago, misty said:

Native wim support
All Windows from Vista up have been distributed using the Windows Imaging Format. If PEBakery is being released as a Windows PE builder, then native .wim support via PEBakery commands would be very useful.

MistyPE can continue to use ShellExecute commands to call wimlib-imagex.exe, however if it's possible to add native commands for .wim support via the wimlib library (libwim-15.dll - see https://wimlib.net/apidoc/index.html) then this would be useful across multiple projects. Whilst 7-zip may provide some .wim support, Eric's work is in my opinion the industry standard.

Being able to manipulate wim files is a very necessary feature indeed.

wimgapi and wimlib have thier own advantages, so let's discuss about how to design new commands for wim files.

9 hours ago, jaclaz said:

BTW, and as a side-side note, the use of external programs, unless you are a computer science guru pontificating on how other people should write programs[1] is just some of the usual fluff, with no merit, there is nothing bad or good in using external programs or in not using them.

If an external program exists, does what is supposed to do and does it well, there is no reason to re-implement it internally if not saving a few microseconds or milliseconds.

Regarding external programs, I think the main problem is WinBuilder projects have to depend on external program to workaround WinBuilder bugs (Ex. Macro Library).

Making PEBakery to do jobs what was supposed be done with WinBuilder will benefit projects.

23 hours ago, misty said:

PEBakery Roadmap
In your own words, "...PEBakery works as a drop-in replacement of WB082...". In MistyPE this would appear to have been achieved following the correction of some scripting/syntax errors that I had not picked up on that were running in WinBuilder (and probably shouldn't have been). 

From the information I've so far skimmed, not all WinBuilder commands have been fully implemented. Please can you let us know what you plan to concentrate on to avoid you being bombarded with feature requests. For example are you wanting to focus on tests/bug fixes, or documentation, or full WinBuilder compatibility, etc.

These are my plan for a near future:

1) Release of PEBakery 1.0 stable
2) Official Documentation

PEBakery is compatible with a subset of WinBuilder commands, because omitted commands are nearly extinct in projects.
I do not plan to research more, with the exception of unsupported commands are being used in production.

23 hours ago, misty said:

Also, PEBakery is being discussed across multiple sites/forums including here at MSFN, and reboot.pro, and theoven.org and mdl. Where would YOU prefer posts to be made?

I prefer github issue traker to discuss about bug report and feature request (Ex. FileCopy is buggy), and forums for general topics (Ex. What feature to add, which article documentation should include).
Being in multiple site let me to hear many opinions in different envrionment, so you can use the forum wherever you prefer.

Edited by Joveler
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20 hours ago, Joveler said:

I partially agree using this kind of branch in projects is a bit dirty, but currently there are no other way to make use of PEBakery's advaned feature before designing new language.
Even after new language is released, rewriting all .script file is too tedious, and currently I do not expect writing one-to-one converter can be done in short term (WB syntax is... a quite ambigious, making conversion too hard). So it is natural to think many people will continue to use WB syntax for a seeable future, then why not give developers a way to use advanced features.

Yes, we are agreeing, of course noone is going to re-write the existing (and working) .scripts, but the issue/risk I was mentioning is that since (part of ) the Community is ( for the known reasons) ideologically anti-Winbuilder, the risk is that something that could run just fine under Winbuilder will be written on purpose to only run under PEbakery, doing IMHO a not-so-good service to BOTH Winbuilder and to PEbakery, creating more confusion to the "common users" .

A "neutral" developer (like Misty) would use such a feature to "better" the experience under both Winbuilder and PEbakery, someone not-so-neutral may leverage on it to exclude or worsen the usage under Winbuilder (while still using its "botched" syntax).

About the converter, I thought (maybe wrongly) that for each "Winbuilder command" you had a corresponding "internal PEbakery command", so it should not be so difficult to make a mapping between the "new sintax commands" and your "meta-commands" :unsure:.

I mean, while a "simple" converter would be very likely to introduce bugs or however chosse the "wrong possibility" in case of ambiguity, the capacity of PEbakery of interpreting correctly Winbuilder commands (by creating builds with original Winbuilder .scripts) is a guarantee of the correctness of the interpretation.

Of course, there is nothing in itself "bad" about creating new projects, or .scripts (or plugins ;)) that will run ONLY under PEbakery :) using the "old" Winbuilder syntax but surely it would make very little sense, if we agree that one of the base main issue is the syntax and not the engine itself (set apart some minor "queer" behaviours and the often cited and mostly fluffy 32-bit vs. 64-bit argument).

Another thing that I vote for is (if possible of course) Alacran's suggestion:

On 26/12/2017 at 5:25 AM, alacran said:

I respect your decition, but since you ask for comments I suggest lower the NET warn to 4.0 wich I think is more comon since having version from XP to all new sistems it makes sence to me (I always had it installed since XP times).

and (as always only if possible, in due time, etc., etc.) have a detailed list of which parts/subsystems/whatever of .Net are actually needed.

In a perfect world the PEbakery should be runnable even in a very minimal PE, so making a reduced .NET subsystem for these cases, or where the running OS for whatever reason has not a full .NET installed would be IMHO a plus (much like what Nuhi did in the good ol'times for Nlite).

jaclaz

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Build 20180103 (Beta 1)

Download : Link

Changelog
- [Added] ReadInterface, WriteInterface
- [Added] WimMount, WimUnmount
- [Added] ProgressBar for WebGet/WimMount/WimUnmount
- [Added] Flag GLOBAL introduced to SetMacro
- [Added] FileCopy/RegWrite produce LogState.Overwrite instead of LogState.Warning
- [Added] Print summary of warning as well as error in exported log.

- [Changed] Improved Console Output in ShellExecute,Hide.

- [Fixed] Handle negative number properly in Command 'If'.
- [Fixed] Fix hang in System,Cursor.
- [Fixed] Fix hang in UserInput,Dir.
- [Fixed] Fix crash in SettingWindow.
- [Fixed] OnPluginExit/OnBuildExit produces proper #1 argument.
- [Fixed] ShellExecute,Hide,XCOPY.exe,... now work properly on Windows 7


1. Improved Console Output in ShellExecute,Hide
PEBakery will display and log stdout and stderr as unified one output, to simulate real console print.

2. ReadInterface, WriteInterface
This command is a native version of Macro Library's ChangeInterface.
See manual for usage.

3. WimMount, WimUnmount
Native commands for handling wim files are being added.
WimMount and WimUnmount depends on wimgapi, and the other commands are planed to use wimlib.
See manual for usage.

4. ProgressBar for Current Command
PEBakery will display current progress in some commands.
Currently WebGet, WimMount, WimUnmount is supported.
ProgressBar.png.1361af2f7b7a18fb7783f815b8484345.png

 

5. FileCopy/RegWrite produce [Overwrite] log instead of [Warning] log
PEBakery was producing too much overwrite warning, making hard to find more important warnings.
So FileCopy and RegWrite will generate [Overwrite] log instead of [Warning].

 

Edited by Joveler
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@Joveler
Thank you for the addition of the WimMount and WinUnmount commands. :worship:

I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, however the progress bar is only displayed if the Build Project or Run Plugin buttons are pressed. If the commands are executed from a button embedded in the script then the progress bar(s) are not displayed. This is also an issue in WimBuilder (e.g. with WebGet).

I experienced some issues with the new WimUnmount command failing...
 

 WimUnmount - The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process (WimUnmount,%MountDir%)), 

...however I believe that this is a wimgapi issue rather than a PEBakery issue. I stopped using the (DISM) mount command some years ago as I found it buggy with issues arising from mounted files not being fully unmounted and appearing locked.

I have resorted to using wimlib to fully extract and repack a wim rather than mounting and unmounting, although this is a time consuming process. Injecting files with WimLib however is lightning fast. Wimib rocks! I'm pleased to read that you will be implementing this library and am looking forward to seeing how you implement it.

BTW, I'm assuming that changes to the mounted image are not committed? Or am I doing something wrong?

Misty

 

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