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Hello Europe: MMM 0.7 is Here

There won't be a version 0.6.8 as suggested earlier.  For whatever reasons several people seem to want another version numbering scheme to be used, one that exposes the build number.  So now we're at MMM 0.7! New Version 0.7 I wasn't quite ready to put out a new MMM version but then over the past three days I got two bug reports I couldn't ignore. Both of these involved a problem with "comma as decimal point" in some international locales.  A very strange coincidence, but right after fixing this the first time a second report of the same problem came in.  This was enough to get me to pull a new release from the MMM codebase ... (read more)

ADOX 2.8 TypeLib in Vista SP2

Wow, it took me some time to notice it but Microsoft must have been listening. One of the headaches to watch for in Vista was that DAC 6.0 (and MDAC before that) was not including the compatibility typelibs for ADOX the way they do for ADO.  Suddenly I see we have an option now though: msadox28.tlb is there, which implies that msadox.dll now exposes both sets of interfaces. Now programs compiled on Win2k or WinXP against ADOX 2.8 should work under Vista SP2 unlike previously.  I had been changing my habits to use late binding for ADOX objects but someday (once all Vista in the world is at SP2?) I won't have to anymore.  We can hope that Win7 ... (read more)

Looking Toward 0.6.8 Soon

Early feedback has been full of small feature requests.  Some of these seem odd, like requests to make MMM into a general purpose resource editor or some sort of 24-bit color icon embedder.  Others are just off the wall, like asking that MMM support non-VB development tools (huh?).  Still others make a bit more sense, like requesting that MMM fully install as a development topol and add a "Package with MMM" shell verb for .VBP files. Other programming tools already offer their own ways to generate isolated applications.  MMM is targeted at VB6 to help make up for Microsoft's failure to support the community. Version 0.6.8 will ... (read more)

MMM 0.6.7 Ready For Testing

New Version 0.6.7 As described earlier MMM version 0.6.7 is ready for testing and use.  Download it here. While I have put it through some extensive testing nobody else has taken a look at it yet so there may be serious imperfections.  More importantly some application manifest XML changes have been made that might need further tweaking to avoid breaking cases that worked fine earlier.  Please report any problems, and fall back to version 0.6.6 if necessary. That may seem a little alarming, but everyone should keep in mind that MMM remains a work in progress.  There has never yet been a "final release" version at any ... (read more)

December Security Update woes continue

I see there is another attempt to release a Security Update to VB6 SP6: Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Service Pack 6 Cumulative Update dated 5/4/2009.  See KB957924 for details. I have not tested it myself yet to determine whether it fixes the problems the earlier attempts have (breaking MSChart20.ocx for one thing, Winsock control for another).  However but I see that other users say it has not fixed the Winsock control that was also broken in earlier attempts. So far all of the problems I've seen look like bonehead "off by one" errors in the code. Thus I still recommend this "critical update" be avoided - almost 6 ... (read more)

Degraded progress: better than no progress?

Hello Again Yes, it has been quite some time since my last post here.  Progress has been disappointingly slow, probably for the same sorts of reasons you experience in your own projects: Other priorities such as family, health, finances in the present economy, and programming efforts with much higher priority. Laptop that was being used to squeeze in time to work on MMM died, it now appears permanently.  All I'll say is there is a brand of computer I won't trust again soon as well as a certain chipmaker. An amazingly large number of feature requests for MMM, and a few minor and serious glitches that finally have been ... (read more)

KB 926857 and KB 957924

I was able to confirm a problem another user uncovered in the MSChart20.ocx (version 6.0.98.13).

I am holding off installing the Security Update myself until we get further news, and I hope a corrected Update.

Servicing Reg-Free COM Applications: Ideas?

No news, but so far so good on MMM.  No new release ready yet I'm afraid, and it may be late February 2009 before we see one.  Sorry. For now: MMM 0.6.6 is still current. Servicing XCopy Deployments One of the issues we face when creating XCopy deployments with Registration-Free COM is a new challenge in servicing our applications. Installing applications conventionally means that we use a great many components stored in central locations locatable via the registry.  It also means that Windows Update, downloaded Microsoft patches, etc. all update our applications as a matter of course when users install them.  Not so for our ... (read more)

Version 0.6.6 does not expire

The new version of MMM has almost no changes except for eliminating the expiration date. As I mentioned previously this utility is now stable enough that I am no longer concerned about having seriously imperfect versions floating around in the field.  So to eliminate worries about relying on a tool that will stop working suddenly this feature has been taken out.  MMM is still incomplete and I still consider its status to be in extended beta test release.  I hope to produce a true 1.0 release by the second quarter of 2009. As with any new release I'd appreciate early feedback about any problems encountered so that I can get them ... (read more)

Upcoming release

There has been little activity on MMM for some months.  A new version will be posted by December 1st however, and while it will not contain many changes it will remove the time bomb from the program.  MMM is stable enough at this point that I feel quite comfortable doing this. No new features are expected to make the December release, and there is only one minor bug fix that should be fully tested and included by then.  Most users wil only notice very minor cosmetic changes.   The positive feedback has been very encouraging.  I hope to have some time to get the two major new features finished: online Help and command line ... (read more)

MMM's Monolithic Manifest

One of the oddities of current versions of MMM is its flat manifest.  This might seem particularly confusing if you've tried to peruse the sparse documentation on side-by-side manifests and roll your own.  Most of the material available from Microsoft talks about the use of application manifests that reference secondary assembly manifests.  In the most general cases this goes further, with assembly manifests referencing subassembly manifests ad infinitum. One purpose of this is to foster modularity and reusability.  In the general case you would produce a catalog of assemblies with their own manifests and just plug them into new ... (read more)

Isolating the DHTMLEdit control: Vista

A few people have asked me what to do about the DHTMLEdit control.  This was pulled from Windows Vista for several security reasons but a version for applications (not Web pages) was re-released as a Vista add-in. DHTML Editing Control for Applications Redistributable Package (x86) I'm not sure of the implications of using MMM to isolate this component on a pre-Vista machine and then carrying your XCopy package to a Vista system.  What does seem to work is to install the package above into a Vista development machine and isolate it there.  The result seems to work fine in Windows XP SP3, but I haven't tested other OSs yet. Note that MMM will ... (read more)

Error 75? MMM 0.6.5 may help.

MMM the VB6 XCopy Packager has gone through a few changes in recent months.  Most of these have been incremental since the few hours I spend on MMM now are primarily devoted to getting the online Help written. Version 0.6.4 consisted almost entirely of changes in preparation for the new Help.  It also involved attempts to handle components with COM versions over 15.15 but those didn't work and had to be backed out.  If you're like a few people and have some component with a COM version of 22.0 you'll still have trouble.  I haven't been able to work out an answer yet and it might be a limitation in SxS manifests. In any case 0.6.4 was a ... (read more)

Work Continues!

This is really just a brief update to let you know I haven't abandoned the project. I really want to get the online Help finished and put into the next version of MMM.  Along the way I've discovered some font differences in Vista, and at least I caught those before releasing the Help with the flaws that induced. I was planning to move to Comctl32 (5.0) instead of MSComctl (6.0) because a few months ago I finally discovered that Windows Themes don't apply to the newer versions of these controls.  Sadly, the older control set has limitations that I don't have good workarounds for.  So for now I'm stuck with the "old look" for ... (read more)

MMM Demo

Tahir asked for an illustration of how one might package and XCopy-deploy a VB6 application with MMM.

MMMDemo.zip contains an MHT file (Web Archive, easily opened in IE) with step-by-step screenshots showing how this can be done.  Please let me know if this is not clear enough or fails to cover any questions you may have.

Going Up!

While work on a few improvements to MMM continues along with the important task of getting MMM's online Help written and inserted into the product, I've been up to a number of different things.  Working with Vista continues to be a revelation.  Lots of small deployment issues have become apparent. So far workarounds haven't been very troublesome.  I find that post-build scripts automating the Installer object help to supplement Visual Studio Installer 1.1 where it has become a bit dated. Going Up! One of the minor headaches in working with VB6 development under Vista is the need to remember to elevate VB6 each time you start it.  For ... (read more)

Development Machines Need Registered Components

I guess I hadn't made it clear earlier.  One more thing to emphasize in that Help document in the next release!

To develop and compile you need to have all of your ActiveX components registered on the development machine.  MMM needs the information as much as the VB6 IDE and compiler do.

Deployment target machines however is where you no longer need to register components that MMM isolates.

Sorry if I had left that too vague.

Sharing the "Load"

One of the things I hope to get to soon, well after getting the documentation written and a new MMM posted, is to handle Project Groups as well as Projects. Not today. *sigh* In the meantime I've heard from people who have an application with multiple EXEs that have overlaps in their dependencies.  For example three programs, two of which use the same standard DLL for Zip/Unzip operations along with their COM libraries. Right now MMM won't deal with this directly.  But one workaround would be to use MMM to package these as separate projects first, using the same name for their dependencies folders.  Then create a new folder, copy in all of ... (read more)

Reg-Free ASP Too?

It looks like beginning with IIS 6.0 you can use registration-free COM in ASP applications too.  I haven't taken a hard look to confirm this yet, but it seems to be based on a web.manifest file that looks remarkably like those produced for VB6 programs by MMM.

It doesn't appear the XP Pro's IIS 5.1 will run these though.  This means you'll need to test on and target Windows Server 2003 or later.

IIS 7.0 (Server 2008) continues to support ASP and even contains performance enhancements and other modernizations for it.  This should be encouraging to those not ready to plunge into the .Net waters.

Manifest Help for VB6 - From Microsoft!

Well either I'm getting more clever about scouring the Web for information on VB6 and manifests or Microsoft is loosening up and just posting more. Recently I've become concerned about what I think of as "the MSXML 4 precedent."  In order to use MSXML 4.0 (or now MSMXL 5.0 too) it's necessary to select the desired library via a manifest much as you need to with Common Controls 6.0.  When it was just MSXML 4.0 I thought I'd just stick another option checkbox into MMM and be done... but this seemed like a hack. Then when MSXML 5.0 came along it became clear that the simplistic approach taken in MMM to date simply wasn't going to ... (read more)

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