[virt-tools-list] VirtViewer version scheme and Windows ProductVersion

[Marc-André Lureau]

Hi

First of all, I am not a Windows Installer expert, and I would prefer
to follow good practices rather than weird workarounds.

On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 7:56 PM, Daniel P. Berrange <berrange at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 07:36:16PM +0200, Marc-André Lureau wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> The Windows Installer requires a ProductVersion of major.minor.build
>> to perform update correctly. The fourth field is ignored.
>> (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa370859%28v=vs.85%29.aspx)
>>
>> What is the current version scheme meaning? Could we switch to
>> something that would fit Windows? It seems to me major.minor.build
>> would fit better, especially for downstream windows distro who may
>> want to maintain their own build (ovirt/rhevm). The leading 0 could be
>> dropped, so  what about moving form 0.5.6 to 1.0 or 5.7
>
> I don't see any need to change what we do for our versioning
> scheme.
>
> The ProductVersion is 3 digits and that can easily map directly to
> our existing 3 digit release numbers. If you need todo multiple
> rebuilds of the Windows installer for the same version, that doc
> above describes something called a "package code" which could be
> incremented for each new build.

I would like to know what is the purpose of the leading 0.

>
> Alteratively, the build number field of the ProductVersion is
> allowed to take values in the range  1-65536. We never use that
> whole range for micro version numbers. So we could use that to
> encode the micro version number + build number by shifting the
> micro version number 8 bits.

>
> eg,
>
>   version     build    productversion
>   0.5.6       0        0.5.1536   (6 * 256 + 0 == 1536)
>   0.5.6       1        0.5.1537   (6 * 256 + 1 == 1537)
>   0.5.6       2        0.5.1538    ...
>   0.5.7       0        0.5.1792
>   0.5.7       1        0.5.1793
>

Eh ok, that will cause some confusion but can do with that, if the
leading 0 is so important.

> If ovirt/rhevm want todo their own custom windows installers then
> IMHO they should be using a different package name and/or ProductCode
> to distinguish their builds from the official builds.

The product code is a uuid, and we already use that.

We could use a different package name and version scheme, but then we
probably want to use different path etc. That will make it harder to
switch between one and the other I suppose.

-- 
Marc-André Lureau