Why are the XPe tools so bad?

  • Thread starter Thread starter AlexC
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A

AlexC

The tools are truly dreadful and so below standard it's unbelievable
when it comes this type of essential prototyping during optimising an
imnage.

Not to disparage what MS has achieved in componentising a complex OS
but I would be ashamed being a mega billion $$$ company and shipping
this s/w...

e.g.
-no versioning built in to allow e.g. fall back
-no comparision tools built it
-The s/w can't even remember to save the new image to the same place,
it takes the previous setting (when switching between projects).
-when some component gets put in, it's difficult to see what caused it
(you have to grope the logs)
-in order to take out a component you really think doesn't belong,
there is no way to detect what component dependency is going to put
it right back in come the next dependency check.

It's easy to create a 200 MB image which has decent functionlaity
(I'm being subjective here). It's mind bogglingly stupefyingly dull
to get it to 100MB where it can & should be.
 
AlexC said:
The tools are truly dreadful and so below standard it's unbelievable
when it comes this type of essential prototyping during optimising an
imnage.

Not to disparage what MS has achieved in componentising a complex OS
but I would be ashamed being a mega billion $$$ company and shipping
this s/w...

e.g.
-no versioning built in to allow e.g. fall back
-no comparision tools built it
-The s/w can't even remember to save the new image to the same place,
it takes the previous setting (when switching between projects).
-when some component gets put in, it's difficult to see what caused it
(you have to grope the logs)
-in order to take out a component you really think doesn't belong,
there is no way to detect what component dependency is going to put
it right back in come the next dependency check.

It's easy to create a 200 MB image which has decent functionlaity
(I'm being subjective here). It's mind bogglingly stupefyingly dull
to get it to 100MB where it can & should be.


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Click to expand...

I could have swore I read this already???

But, on the subject the tools are a little "difficult" to use in order
to get what you exactly need.

Lots of time goes into getting the image you're looking for.

But, better than nothing, I'm working on my own H/W platform and am
doing things painstakingly slow since, all I do is add this, remove
this, repeat.

But that's how you learn the inner workings, if it was easy anyone could
do it, and I'm not anyone ;)

I look forward to changes if any, if not, I'll have to work harder and
longer to get what I need.

All good points you made.

L8TR
 
thx said:
But that's how you learn the inner workings, if it was easy anyone could
do it, and I'm not anyone ;)
Click to expand...
Indeed - we have people here who have, in general terms, far more Clue
than me, but none of them can get their heads round embedded - whereas
I've spent a lot of time with it and know it well and can do in a few
minutes things that they would (and in one case did) spend months
failing to do.
 
Not to hop on the I Hate MS bandwagon, but after developing on XPe for
almost 3 years now, I can't stand it anymore. I really think XPe is
treated like a step-child by Microsoft. I've seen the embedded timeline
for the next few years and it doesn't look very promising. MS plans to
release "Feature Packs" to fix the toolset, but they are limited in
scope and too far off considering how long XP has been around. This
lack of support is driving our business away from the Windows platform
to linux. I'm not a big fan of Linux and have used Windows my entire
life, but their lack of support and innovation is shocking. Truly sad.

gasmonso
 
We have moved from XPe to Linux. Too bad, but we can do 99% of our work
with much cheaper hardware.

--
Regards.
Mark K Vallevand (e-mail address removed)

Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
- Benjamin Franklin


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The sad part is that Microsoft would read this and not be concerned.
They would assume its just a few people and not a big deal. I work for
GE Healthcare (a rather large company) and we have discussions about
this all the time. Our decision alone to go to Linux would have an
impact of several million on MS. A drop in the bucket I'm sure, but it
has a ripple effect throughout the business and would only grow larger
as other divisions switch based on our recommendation.

gasmonso
 
Wow, a lot of feedback in this thread, thank you! <grin>

Can we do better? Absolutely! There has so much that has been a lesson
learned regarding this platform of tools and components and understanding
where your needs are versus what we anticipated them to be.

Will we do better? Absolutely! The team does listen to this kind of
feedback, the information you've given and others have given in this thread
is generally constructive. I've forwarded on both the most negative and
interesting comments from the thread to the team's new leadership to ensure
that your voice is heard and to give them another perspective on things.

You all are developers. Developers are our customers. And we *must* do
better moving forward by incorporating community feedback like this into the
next version of the tools and alleviate the pain induced by having
superfluous or optional components come into your runtime as you called out.

I'd also like to remind the community that you can also send me your
feedback to our community response alias ([email protected]). If you need
some quick one-off support to get you over the hump in your development or
have a questions we'll assist you the same day if possible.

You can also communicate more quickly with us via the blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/embedded/

Thanks again!
 
This is a great opportunity to introduce myself (and paint a big target on
myself). I'm the product unit manager for the Embedded Windows (aka XP
Embedded) team - I joined the team about three months ago. I run the
engineering team - to put it succinctly, I am now the person at Microsoft who
is most accountable for the quality of XPe customers' experience and their
success.

I just posted a longer piece on my blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/markcli/archive/2006/03/01/541823.aspx
which talks a little bit about the feedback below and where we are going in
the team and product. To summarize quickly - we do care (as Andy says
below), we're in the process of increasing our investment in the
product/experience, and over time we will make significant progress. If you
have time to read it and provide any feedback (positive or negative), I'd
appreciate it. I posted it over there simply to avoid having it scroll away
into the newsgroup netherworld.

And to echo Andy, thanks for being honest with us about what you think.
There are few things that motivate here people more than hearing customers
say "this sucks - I can be much more successful if you...".
 
Hi all, ha ha ha

if you are in this newsgroup, you are certainly working on XPe,
congratulation,
if you are not yet an expert, you will eventually be.

In my company, we have experts in architecture, design, XML, UML, DCOM,
Network, C++..., and now that I have been working on XPe for several
years, I am now also an expert.

so, when having to add another hardware support, my boss does need me,
when having to generating a new image including the last pack, they need
me, when a patch breaks the existing behavior, only me know how to undo
the component data base, I'm really an expert.

I am thinking that I have my job insurred for long time.

now when your collegue compile his kernel in 4-5 minutes, you are still
loading
your 20MB slx file, so you can go have a cafe. when your collegue is testing
his new kernel, you are just 'checking dependency', you can talk the
weather,
and when you're 'building embedded image', as you have all your time, you
can
have a tea. after the tea, come the FBA, this time you can go to smoke, have
conversion
with other experts them on DCOM, you on XPe.

when your collegue can still use his old PC without crying, your boss has
bought you
the last brand new PC, you have a new toys to play, 21" display...
and when things can not be done with simple command, other experts would
tell you
to use this or that API, and you end to have Visual Studio, SDK, your boss
consider
you are important cause he spends much money on that others who just
download things from internet.

as you are an expert, you can answer newbie questions to this newsgroup, and
when people feedback saying 'thanks', your ego gets satisfied, when
occasionally
you answer to an tough question and get 'many, many thanks', your immense
ego
becomes inconmensurable.

finally, in one word, congratulation, you get a long term job.

Zirong Wang
 
...
so, when having to add another hardware support, my boss does need me,
when having to generating a new image including the last pack, they need
me, when a patch breaks the existing behavior, only me know how to undo
the component data base, I'm really an expert.

I am thinking that I have my job insurred for long time.
Click to expand...

I think there's a real danger in thinking so. There are different kinds of
knowledge. Fiddling with the peculiariarities of a very specific tool may
make you valuable as long as this particular tool is in use. If your
employer abandons this tool, you may find that you have wasted years of your
career on totally specific odds and ends, which you can never transport to
any other field. You may find that in the meantime, new concepts and
technologies have emerged that you have no experience with.

Developing with Windows XPE is very time consuming, but the experience you
gain is totally limited. You're the hero of the moment when you've finally
found the solution for an odd problem that you should never have faced
anyway if the process just ran more smoothly. You learned to beat the XPE
peculiarities, but that is not a concept, philosophy or genuine skill that
you can use again in a different context.

I believe working exclusively on XPE would be a dead-end street for my
career.
 
Dear Eberhard,

I was hoping people would understand my second degree meaning
when I wrote my prose yesterday evening, I first wanted to
congratulate Mark and his company, gasmonso, but I prefered
use a humoristic style.

what would you comment on my saying of having time to
take a cafe, tea, talk on weather, smoke a cigarette...

if you search on google, you would find that almost all my
questions posted in this news group did not get an effective
answer.

when I said 'my collegue' who compiles the kernel in 4-5 minutes,
this collegue is ME.

more seriously, with MS's tools, you have just to learn walk,
and you can run quickly. but you can NEVER fly

with alternative (a.k.a viral) tools, you must learn to
crawl, then learn to walk, then you can run, but you know that
you eventually will fly.

with friendly regards

Zirong
 
...
I was hoping people would understand my second degree meaning
when I wrote my prose yesterday evening, I first wanted to
congratulate Mark and his company, gasmonso, but I prefered
use a humoristic style.
Click to expand...

Sorry I missed that. I'll have my irony detector checked first thing in the
morning.
more seriously, with MS's tools, you have just to learn walk,
and you can run quickly. but you can NEVER fly
Click to expand...

Actually, I think that some parts of Visual Studio in conjuction with .NET
are pretty clever and practical. I regard the time spent with these tool
much less as a waste than with the XPE intrinsics.
 
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