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Marnetmar

SlimDX Files?

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What are the exact files installed on your system that make up SlimDX, and is it possible to retrieve them so you don't have to use an installer to copy them somewhere else?

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Is that the one?

http://slimdx.org/

I hate installers too, but if experience is any indication, with .NET related stuff it won't be enough just to copy a bunch of files in a folder, change a path and be done with it, even if you manage to pinpoint them all. There might be .ini files inside windows directory, registry entries etc.

In any case, a SDK like this one is bound to have a lot of unique files that you won't find anywhere else, and there may be hundreds if not thousands of files once it's installed. Were you really looking for a list of each one of them? Why not let the installer do its job on at least one system and see if you can make sense of the changes it makes?

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Well, let's rectify: I hate certain kinds of installers. Examples:

  • Installers that refuse to install because they don't "like" something in your system based on arbitrary restrictions (HP laser printer on Windows 2000 running on a Pentium I), but if you manage to extract the .cab and .inf files from the temp installation directory the actual drivers work just fine. Some Pentium I era DOS games were infamous for refusing to install on a non-Intel CPU, but would work just fine if you copied the files from elsewhere.
  • Web installers. I WANT A STANDALONE INSTALLER THAT I CAN PUT ON A DISK AND WHICH I KNOW WILL COMPLETE ITS JOB WHEN I RUN IT, DAMMIT!
  • Installers which are so broken that they can't complete the job and I need manual intervention anyway. Might just as well give me a bunch of files and a readme telling me "copy them there".
just to cite a few.

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The Windows 95 edition of Command & Conquer was bad for that. It refuses to install on XP because the Windows version is too high.

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Aliotroph? said:

The Windows 95 edition of Command & Conquer was bad for that. It refuses to install on XP because the Windows version is too high.


Well that's a different thing entirely and probably forgivable due to oversight (and fixable).

On the other hand, an application that uses just standard Win32 calls and thus could run on anything from Win95 and afterwards but refuses to install on anything before Vista just because of an installation option and because the developer thought it was "for the best" and to "get on with the times", that would be fucked up. Sadly, that includes Microsoft themselves.

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That's something MS could fix nicely by including a standardized compatibility monitor in their tools that checks which versions of Windows could run your program and shows in detail which elements are specific to which versions.

They already have something like this for accessibility. I've never bothered fiddling with it though.

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