Y18-11 – Monthly review of actions

The Interoperability SIG met from 9 am till 10 am European Central Time.

Agenda

Versioning of documents, documentation sets, IDL, type libraries, etc…

Participants

Malcolm WOODMAN, Michael HALLORAN (Contractor for CO-LaN), Michel PONS (Contractor to CO-LaN as Chief Technology Officer)

Highlights

• Issue with software vendor having developed its own PIA instead of using the CO-LaN provided one
  • Development team at software vendor was unaware of PIA provided by CO-LaN
  • Need to improve communication on CO-LaN website
  • Need to emphasize use of CO-LaN provided installers for TLB and PIA
  • Update all the code examples to emphasise the use CO-LaN provided type library / PIA installer
  • Management Board level
    • Address concern over correct contacts in (especially large) vendors
    • Reporting of issues to vendors by their clients, as well as CO-LaN
    • CO-LaN contractors must follow the standard process in generating code examples
• Versioning
  • Michael HALLORAN has technically proved that Type library can be embedded in PIA
    • PIA is delivered as a versioned dll
    • If the dll is registered as a type library, standard COM tools can extract the type library
    • If implemented, next version of installer has the type library removed, therefore the installer should remove the old type library
• Type library installers
  • Vendors need to be able to deliver the 32-bit type library installer within their own 64-bit product installers.
  • Windows installer supports this technique
  • Current structure of CO-LaN type library merge modules does in theory  support this, but the use of the GAC (Global Assembly Cache) means that it does not actually work
  • Interoperability SIG has been working with software vendor to attempt to resolve this
  • Michael HALLORAN to investigate the option to use separate names for the 32-bit and 64-bit PI

Next meeting of the Interoperability SIG is scheduled for November 21, 2018.