XML file merge at design time

[stevebroshar]

We use the XML file feature to generate the app config files for our app. The process is to manually develop/edit a version of a config file that works on the deployed app. Then, import that file into AI. Then, we modify the file definition by replacing various hard-coded values with parameters, where needed. Most of the file is static content, but a non-trivial amount varies from install to install based on customer input. That all works great.

Here’s my pain. When we change or add something to the system that requires a non-trivial change to the config file, AI has little support. I have two options: re-do the process described above … which is lengthy and error-prone. Or I could enter the new information into the file setup manually – one key/value at a time – also lengthy and error-prone. Here is what I’d like to have AI do: allow me to merge in changes from a file. This is how it would work: I would produce a config file that works for the installed system (like above). Then, in AI, I’d ask to merge this file into an exist XML file definition. AI would insert new keys and values. That’s basically it. But, I guess there would be some question about what AI should do when it finds keys/values that are different. For parameterized content, differences are expected, but for non-parameterized content one would probably want to overwrite from the new file. I guess AI could prompt for any differences and allow the user to overwrite or ignore each.

[Daniel]

Hello,

Thank you for your thoughts and feature suggestion. I forwarded your feedback to our development team and maybe they will consider implementing such new feature in the future.

We will update this thread when such feature will be available.

All the best,
Daniel

[Daniel]

Hi,

The "External Diff for XML files" new feature has been added in version 16.3 of Advanced Installer released on September 4th, 2019.

All the best,
Daniel

[Collins]

Hi,

The "External Diff for XML files" new feature has been added in version 16.3 of Advanced Installer released on September 4th, 2019.

All the best,
Daniel

Daniel,

This is a great feature and I'm glad that it was added. Can I request an improvement that after doing a diff, that all the conditions and settings not be reset for the elements and sections that are not updated? Right now, if I do a diff and update just one thing, the entire config gets reset and I loose all the conditions and other settings, which is a lot of work to redo and get set up correctly again.

[Daniel]

Hi,

Thank you for your additional feedback and for your positive words. Please also accept my apologies for the delayed reply.

Indeed, our External Diff for XML files support will reset the conditions and XML settings to default when during the XML diff process you update the XML content and save it into the setup project. And this is mainly because there is not a foolproof programmatically method we could use to map the content of the updated XML file to the original XML file content from the project.

There could be lots of corner case scenarios when the XML updated content has no unique identifier trace in the XML file and in this case we cannot create a 100% successful mapping between the updated and original content from the project.

Thank you for your understanding.

All the best,
Daniel

[Collins]

I understand, thank you for researching this.

[Daniel]

You are always welcome.

All the best,
Daniel