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