Componentizing Winamp - Pt 1

I'm going to teach you how to componentize third party applications. I'm all about the 'baby steps', so we'll start by setting our sights on something small like Winamp - Lite. We'll document the steps, the trials and tribulations of the process, if I make mistakes or go down the wrong path you'll be there with me to learn from it, hopefully providing you some insight into this process of componentizing apps.

By selecting Winamp I have multiple goals here.

One is to show the Windows Media Player team what a tangled web of dependencies they weave by demonstrating (side by side) a minimal Embedded runtime with Winamp and a runtime with WMP. I don’t know what the results will be, but I’m pretty sure Winamp will come in with a smaller footprint. We’ve gotten lots of customer feedback over the years on this feature’s dependencies and it’s painful. They're a pretty good team, their PM (Scott) and Dev (Zach) that have componentized all flavors of WMP for us the last 5 years have been very responsive. We'll see what they think of this <grin>

Second, I’m going to share the component with you. I won’t be redistributing the binaries in the repository but I will give you the SLD, a pointer to the download location for the installer of the version I’m componentizing and the list of files you need to collect from that installer. Why would I share? Because while I want to evangelize the benefits of XPe versus WindRiver/Linux/QNX, etc…I also understand the importance of “community”. So in that vain I want to provide something useful back to you instead of yapping on this blog all the time. Hopefully you can leverage this component, if for nothing else, then as a proof of concept for your device.

Third, the primary purpose of this exercise was to share with you the end to end process of how to componentize a third party application, think of it as a teaching tool. I don’t know yet how well this process is going to turn out, it may in fact result in a nightmare of non-intuitive non-discoverable dependencies on files and registry keys. So this may turn into an opportunity for you to point and snicker as you see me go through the same pain you may be dealing with.

I’ll post Pt 2 Tuesday or Wednesday by listing the initial steps. After this exercise is complete we'll either pick something more complex, either a difficult set of drivers (like the biometric fingerprint readers) or a larger application.

- Andy

Comments

• Anonymous
  September 02, 2005
  Over the Spring of '05, I posted a series of blog posts on the end to end process to componentize 3rd...
• Anonymous
  February 01, 2009
  注：本文由 邹少颖 译自2005年 Andy Allred 所写的关于组件化的博客系列的 引子 ，及 之一 。 在05年春季，我在博客上发布了一系列的文章，描述如何把第三方应用程序或驱动程序组件化。我之所以发表这些文章，是因为我看到了很多人抱怨这个过程太难，不直观。特别是对一些不明白什么是“应用程序接口”，或者不知道什么是MSDN的人来说。