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Windows CE 5.0: Platform Diff and New Wizard.

A couple of months ago I talked about Windows CE 5.0 comparing workspaces - Here's the problem I was having that kicked off this whole process.

I'd been working on a demo (I think this was for CES) over a period of a couple of months I worked on my Windows CE platform workspace, adding some components from the catalog, deleting some components from my workspace - at the end of building the demo I had a working o/s image that ran perfectly - Other people wanted to use the same demo, so wanted to recreate the same platform workspace that I was using - I could, of course, just give them a complete copy of my workspace folder but wanted to be able to document the steps needed to create the workspace.

In order to do this I needed a way of figuring out the delata between my original wizard template workspace (I used the Windows Based Terminal template as the starting point for my demo workspace) and my final platform - the problem here is that the wizard template xml files list all components by their GUID, the PBXML file lists it's components by SYSGEN. Windows CE ships with an Access database (MDB File) that contains a table that contains the mapping between GUIDs and SYSGENS - given this information I decided to write a utility that I could point at my Platform Builder Workspace and generate a list of what's been added/removed when compared against the initial platform wizard configuration.

I decided to take this one step further - wouldn't it be cool for the tool to generate a new Platform Wizard XML file based on your current platform configuration - you could share this wizard xml file with your friends/colleagues and have them easily recreate your platform (of course they would still need to add any applications, drivers etc... that you had written for your platform - but hey, this is still a step in the right direction!).

Here's how the utility looks - you can download the tool here - note that this requires the .NET Framework 2.0 (yep, 40MB download to run a 20KB application!).

The steps to run the application are simple...

1. Select File | Open PB Workspace - this will browse for a PBXML file (Platform Builder Workspace) - this will give you the list of added/removed components.

2. Select File | Build Platform Wizard - this will generate a new Platform Builder Wizard XML file based on your platform configuration - the next time you run Platform Builder your new wizard should be available in the New Platform Wizard.

Pretty cool, eh ! - Oh, I forgot to mention, if you want to see the GUID/Sysgen mappings the tool generates an XML file that gets dropped into your \Wince500 root folder.

 

- Mike

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 06, 2006
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    March 06, 2006
    Hi Ed,

    Thanks for the comment - can you let me know what you are having problems with on Windows CE ?

    - Mike
  • Anonymous
    March 07, 2006
    I have sent you an email with more details.

    Thanks,
    Ed
  • Anonymous
    March 07, 2006
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2006
    This tool is exactly what I needed too often so far.

    But unfortunately it crashes right after opening as it says  "'C:WINCE500PUBLICCOMMONOAKCATALOGDATABASEpbdb.mdb' is not a valid path." Same error occurs on opening workspaces.

    Of course there is a backslash missing, but I don't know how to fix this.

    Best regards, ole
  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2006
    ok, I think I see the problem - what registry key contents do you have here.

    HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftPlatform Builder5.00DirectoriesOS Install Dir ?

    - Mike
  • Anonymous
    March 14, 2006
    The OS Install Dir is "D:WINCE500"

    /Helge
  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2006
    ok, interesting, it looks like if you install Windows CE to something other than "C:" then the trailing slash on the OSDir is removed.

    Ok, this should be an easy fix - I hope to have something posted back to the blog today.

    - Mike
  • Anonymous
    March 19, 2006
    Some of you reported problems with the Windows CE Image Diff Tool - I'd like to determine what's...
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