yesterday i found this the hard way, but was able to quickly recover without issue. today i’m writing it up because: the Digital Lighting product line is uniquely positioned to benefit from the real value, hidden behind the “fix”. enjoy!
when CMA is installed to a custom location, the StarBurn type library is COM-Registered with an invalid path; burnCDDVDMenuItem_Click() crosses the interop boundary outside of a Try-Catch, and the exception bubbles all the way up and surfaces:
[INDENT][ATTACH]1937[/ATTACH]
[/INDENT]WiX can produce these discrepant paths when the file-harvest fragment and the COM-harvest fragment are created separately and later combined:
[INDENT][ATTACH]1938[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH]1939[/ATTACH]
[/INDENT]new in Windows XP (and vital for the “cloud”) is a facility for activating arbitrary COM components without the need for them to be registered: Registration-Free COM.
plainly: the two hundred fifty-three StarBurn_CMA Registry rows need not be created correctly as they, in fact, do not need to be created at all.
the COM “plumbing” can instead be delivered in a single, loose file: see .manifest, attached.
to observe the .manifest providing Registration-Free COM interop:
[LIST=1]
install CMA as usual
create a copy of the “Content Management Application” folder: “Content Management Application - Copy”
uninstall CMA
place ContentManagementApplication.exe.manifest in the “Content Management Application - Copy” folder
Optional: switch to a clean, .NET 2.0, network-attached machine; browse to \\FIRSTMACHINE\c$\Program Files\HighEnd\Content Management Application - Copy
run Content Management Application - Copy\ContentManagementApplication.exe
File > Burn CD/DVD
[INDENT]on Windows XP and above, the .manifest must be in the same folder as the .exe; this particular .manifest also expects the .ocx to be in the same folder.
the only other requirement is: if the COM components advertised by the .manifest happen to be formally registered, those registrations must be valid – Registration-Free COM breaks if bad paths already exist in the Registry.
[/INDENT]one example of a .NET opportunity that is impaired by formal COM registration, but can be fully-realized when Reg-Free:
CMA could run freely from any UNC path, including USB, SMB or HTTP
CMA could run from any of these paths, without having to be installed
CMA could be delivered via a ClickOnce installer, which can install and auto-update, without requiring elevation or even an administrator
physical units could advertise a ready-to-run, version-matched CMA via Universal Plug and Play or DPWS, which would be presented to standard users for one-time run, install or upgrade, immediately upon connecting to the network, with no manual discovery process required.
[INDENT](all: provided LmCompatibilityLevel=0 can be eliminated)
[/INDENT]installing to a custom location is, admittedly, not yet common, but it is a currently-available option; as such, all components need to be in working order when that option is exercised. getting there just happens to liberate your application from a highly volatile, machine-specific, dependency injection factory, and - at the same time - promotes CMA to one of the only applications in the industry with the early advantage on actually utilizing next-generation platforms (for more than just distribution).