XPe -> very time consuming? Yes or No

  • Thread starter Thread starter stt
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S

stt

hello everybody.

This is not really a technical question about xpe, but more about
your experiences.

I'm working and maintaining an xp project now almost two years,
but every time again when an update has to be done it takes more
than a whole day to make for example the hardware work. Almost
every time there is something that goes wrong or does not work
immediately.

XPe is supposed to be as simple as just making a
new component, include it in your project and that's it.....
Unfortunatly this is almost never the case....

And what about your opinion about your first xpe project???
How long did it took to start from zero (never heard about xpe)
until your first project ever was done???

my conclusion is: XPE is super-great, but every time again there
appears something unexepted, so that it takes more time than
pre-calculated...

am i the only one with such experiences???
 
You haven't given information about what part of the process creates the
unexpected delay. My application consists of standard components and
just one service component that I add. My service consists of a few
..EXE and .DLL files. After FBA I transfer my image to an SDI virtual
disk and then I create an .SDI file for remote boot. I always save the
SDI virtual disk file because assuming that basic configuration
information doesn't change, such as my Service Data, all I need to do is
slip new files into my SDI virtual disk and then make a new .SDI so many
modifications I make take very little time.

Regarding your question about how long it took to complete my first
project my answer is that it took a huge amount of time which I think is
due to poorly organized documentation and low quality tutorials, some of
which have critical errors. However that was about 1.5 years ago which
I think was before any books were available. I don't know how helpful
the books are because I haven't seen them.

Finally, regarding your other theme as to whether XPe is simple or hard
to use I think it would be impossible to use if it were not for this NG.
IMHO MS has not put together a set of documentation that stands on its
own and it is essentially impossible to predict where the key piece of
information you need might be (in MSDN library, community tips, NG
archives, tool help files, etc., etc.). I think the expectation is that
a user is already a "Windows programmer" so many important Windows
details are not included in the documentation. The fallacy of this
assumption is that people who approach XPe from the "real embedded"
world (such as me) often know little or nothing about Windows and such
people are likely to be overwhelmed for quite a long time.

Roger
 
hi roger,

my situation is exactly the same like yours.
I started almost 2 years ago with XPe and got almost no documentation,
so it took very very much time to make the first build.

Needed to wait almost 6weeks before amazon deliverd me
the books "xp embedded step by step" and "xp embedded advanced", so
that could be one of the causes of my slow start.
The first two months everything was "try en error".

Also always doing the dependancy check, building the image, sending it to
the device, FBA and let everything automatically install takes almost
1 hour each time.... => in 1 working day you can not do much...
but also with the books, it remains: try and error....

for beginners new to XPembedded I can advice you a book
that i needed more than the XPE books: "XP Registry Guide"....

Yes Roger, it's also true you have to be very good with windows; not that
much in programming, but more in tweaking windows. I was also more
familiar with real embedded systems (µcontroller programming) and
was not a MSCE...

anyway I learned of windows thanks to XPe....

I really regret i haven't written down all problems i ever met since i
work with xpe.... it would be a enormeous huge list !!! :-)

anyway, most of it are all solved now, and mostly thanks to this NG and some
very active persons here !!! lot of thanks to them !!!
 
and with us it 's a bit more complicated;
we have a lot of hardware attached and we have a lot of different
user/administrator
restrictions, user interfaces and different shells... and we can not work
with sdi image files
since many customers are abroad and we send the CF cards with the images
to our customers where they can do FBA so everything needs to be installed
automatically without errors.
 
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