eoinkennedy

Hi,
I have a quick question for anybody who develops software for the PPC.

I have a few programs installed, like PIMs, which are taking up nearly 5 megs in DLL's in the \Windows folder, and trying to move all their files onto the SD card, into the folders where the main executable is stored, stops them working.

Why are files stored in the \Windows folder on the device?

If a program is installed onto a CF or SD card, then why not keep all the files relating to an app together in its own folder, rather than taking up space in memory?

The programs will not run properly if the card is removed, regardless of where it is installed.

If its a question of the speed difference between device memory and SD/CF memory, I don't think there is such a large amount of difference.

I'm really just curious, so that when I start developing I know of any pitfalls in this area, and if there is no reason for storing files in the \Windows folder, should I look forward to programs using less of my main memory.

Eoin

amitregev

Hi Eoin,

I'm the head of the development team of CP Pro on SBSH.net Mobile Software and our software also must be installed on the default directory and we have several files stored in the \Windows folder so I'll try to answer your question.

I'll answer from our product "Calendar Plus Professional" point of view, which is a today screen plug-in and behaves a bit different from a regular stand-alone program, but the same answer is right for any "large" software that connects to the main PIM database and etc.

The way Microsoft designed the OS, many of the databases and important DLL's are located on the \Windows folder and software that want to connect to the default PIM databases need to sit under the same folder, the same thing for any Today screen plug-in that must be installed in the \Windows folder.

I think it might also work if it will be installed in a different folder but this is not documented so we never tried it (you don't want to try things that are not documented because you can't really know if they will work on all devices etc.).

One thing is for sure, if a program is designed to work on the default install dir only, trying to move it's files will cause it not to work any more almost all the time, this is because that at the time of the installation the software writes values in the registry that specify other software-depended files location, moving these files will cause the software not to work any more.

I hope it helped...

eoinkennedy

Thats why I love this site.


Thanks, guess its a MS caused difficulty then.

Eoin

pswets

Quote:

Originally posted by eoinkennedy Thanks, guess its a MS caused difficulty then.

One is tempted to use this as a generic response. It seems applicable to rather a large class of problems.