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Newsgroup thread on the 'Driver Componentizer'

  • Artigo

Here's a thread from the public newsgroup weeks ago by Henry Markov about an idea he had. I agree that the idea has some merit and I'm surprised we didn't do this long ago, but with a million other things to do it appears to have slipped through the cracks.

The gist of it is a tool that the Embedded Windows developer would run on the Windows Client OS on their device (if possible) in order to create an uber driver component that contains all required drivers, software enumerated devices and repository of files all collected off of that client box. You could then import this single package into your XPe component database and add it to your configuration.

This method would probably help ensure you had a good initial experience when getting an image onto your device, further reducing your time to market and making you happier (hopefully less stressed).

My reply from the thread may help explain a little better what this 'driver componentizer', as Henry called it, would do:

If I'm interpreting this correctly the tool would walk the Enum key,
identify all drivers and software enumerated devices, locate the inf that
installed the driver, identify the files, regkeys and service registration
information then populate all this to a component with repository of infs
and driver files?

For a lot of drivers this might work, some of the newer more complex drivers
from nvidia/ati for instance are doing some of the work through their
installers sometimes, as opposed to letting setupapi do the work (which
means the INF would have all needed information).

So for the detectable installation activities for a driver, yes I think a
tool like this would be possible.

Please comment on this, is it interesting, a waste of time?

- Andy

Technorati Tags: Componentization, XPe

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    PingBack from http://msdnrss.thecoderblogs.com/2007/09/05/newsgroup-thread-on-the-driver-componentizer/

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2007
    So, when can we expect to see this?

  • Anonymous
    September 10, 2007
    At this point I'm just surfacing it to the community at large and asking for feedback to determine the level of interest before deciding it's a 'must have' for the product. So far the response has been pretty meager.

  • Anonymous
    September 25, 2007
    Holy cow that would be useful.  Especially if it would configure RAID drivers.  That's my biggest challege with getting an XPE image to run. Go ahead, make it.  I dare ya'