SVS Best Practices: Baseline Machine for Creating VSPs

Every computer setup requires its own unique combination of applications. Most, however, start with a core set that includes the basic necessities. Here are a few suggestions from Juice reader Tom Fronza.

Knowing what to have on a BASE BUILD machine is always a good practice. It gives your team a guide of what to have on the "Build PC".

For us at TAX we have two build PCs. One with Windows and Patches and One with Windows and Patches Plus MS Office 2003. That way, when we need to have an application with Office hooks we can easily do it.

Thanks - Tom Fronza

Editor's note: Additional info from Scott Jones added 4/28/07:

A lot of comments about SVS package building have pointed out the convenience of using virtual machines, especially when you want to have multiple baselines like Tom discusses. I think we all agree that's a great idea, but something just happened to me last week that I wanted to share.

I've been using pretty much the same unpatched, original-shipping XP Pro VM for my demos and package building for a couple years now. Generally, the only changes I make are are the wallpaper and upgrade to new versions of SVS and Trinket, then do a new snapshot.

Well... After upgrading to SVS 2.1 Beta 2, the new wallpaper from Winnie Lim and Trinket 1.0.0.9... I inadvertently did something I'd never done before. I make my new snapshot immediately, while Windows was still up and running. The result: Every time I cranked up the VM to do a new capture, the variables Windows uses for GUID generation were exactly the same, and every new layer I created got the same GUID!

GUIDer saved the day for me, so I didn't have to go back and do all my captures back over again (not that it would have been especially painful to do so -- we all know how simple package building is with SVS! I'm just really lazy sometimes.). But the tip here is this: When making a baseline VM for creation of Virtual Software Packages, shut down Windows before doing your snapshot. That way, when you bring it up to do a capture, Windows will boot up and the Windows GUID generation API will have new variables to create a unique GUID.