New Exiftool base system - prefer direct integration?

[lbo]

Hi Mario,

Phil recently discontinued the Activestate and PAR/pp based ExifTool and uses now my launcher and Strawberry Perl base package.

More information on my package:

• https://www.photools.com/community/index.php/topic,10077
• https://www.photools.com/community/index.php/topic,9057.msg63651.html
• https://oliverbetz.de/pages/Artikel/Portable-Perl-Applications
• https://oliverbetz.de/pages/Artikel/ExifTool-for-Windows

As I suggested earlier,  you might prefer not to call my compiled .exe (now distributed by Phil) but to duplicate my code to invoke the Perl DLL directly from IMatch instead.

In my opinion, that would be cleaner and more straightforward.

Let me know if you want me to help.

I just can't test it myself because I hardly use IMatch at the moment and therefore haven't updated my license to the latest version.

Greetings

Oliver

[lbo]

BTW: In the last years, my ExifTool package solved issues regarding stability, speed, false positives from virus scanners etc. for several ExifTool users. It doesn't suffer from files accidentally being removed from (or changed in) %temp% as the PAR/pp based ExifTool did.

[Mario]

Running helpers like ExifTool, FFMpeg and others as separate processes has many advantages, from scalability to avoiding IMatch being terminated when the external helper crashes.

I have not yet worked with the "new" ExifTool.exe model. I look for ExifTool updates only a few days before I ship a new IMatch release to integrate it and run tests.

[lbo]

Running helpers like ExifTool, FFMpeg and others as separate processes has many advantages, from scalability to avoiding IMatch being terminated when the external helper crashes.

I see.

I have not yet worked with the "new" ExifTool.exe model. I look for ExifTool updates only a few days before I ship a new IMatch release to integrate it and run tests.

The main difference is that the self extracting PAR/pp packed weirdness is gone: You get a directory structure with about 500 files consisting of ExifTool plus Perl. Perl runs in place, no more extracting to %temp%.

[Mario]

The main difference is that the self extracting PAR/pp packed weirdness is gone: You get a directory structure with about 500 files consisting of ExifTool plus Perl. Perl runs in place, no more extracting to %temp%.

I understood that and this is indeed a big improvement. Although virus checker false positives for ExifTool are rare (much less that e.g. Norton complaining about IMatch during installation) this will further reduce them, I'm sure.

[lbo]

another issue was that processes fiddling with %temp% could damage the PAR/pp based ExifTool. Par uses a simple "canary file" (their wording, not mine) to detect the presence of the unpacked system. This doesn't detect partial deletions.

[Mario]

I have already integrated the "new" ExifTool distributable in the next IMatch release.
Unless I run into any troubles with installing it with the IMatch installer, it should work just fine.