Layer Press Tool

Since the beginning of SVS, customers have talked about how useful it could be if admins had a way to update an application's read-only sublayer with the data in the writable sublayer.

This would essentially "snapshot" the app at its current state on a given client, making the Reset command even more useful than it already is. Then, when a user has a problem with an application, the help desk could reset it to the "snapshot" point. If that didn't resolve the issue, they would still have the option of deleting the layer and re-importing it from the original archive.

Such functionality could also be used by the repackaging team to easily create a new version of a Virtual Software Package for the master software library.

We took to calling this function "Layer Press". That is, "press" the content of the writable sublayer "down" into the read-only sublayer. SVS tester Jared Payne even started work on a Layer Press tool on his own time, back in the 2.0 Beta 3 days. However, when we made the security enhancements prior to final release of 2.0, the "press" functionality got significantly more complex. As you are probably aware, writable sublayers have multiple user-specific areas for user profile data.

Would it be sufficient to just merge the content from the current interactive user? Or, to be of value, should a GUI list all users with profile data in the layer and let you decide how to handle them? Maybe the user profile stuff isn't even needed? When something already exists in the read-only sublayer, what should happen -- prompt the user to confirm overwrite? Lots of questions about how this should be done to be most useful...

We've been keeping Jared busy ever since, and he hasn't had the opportunity to revisit this and figure out how best to tackle it. So I figured I'd throw the idea out there and invite you Juice tools gurus to take a swing at it.

This is not another "tool bounty". That approach proved to be too difficult to manage. It's just an idea for your consideration. We think this is an empty space that many SVS 2.x users could benefit from if it were filled.

FYI: In a future release of SVS, we will be adding a Rollback option that will preserve Reset point as you know it today, but also add another, intermediary option for recovering from an app problem. Essentially, there will be a third sublayer between the current Read-Only and Writable sublayers that -- when a specific command is either automatically or manually sent -- Writable sublayer content gets pressed into.

Related: Here's another idea somewhat related -- A tool to clean up unneeded user profiles in a layer! You often end up with at least one extra profile from the package-building machine, if the packager didn't build the layer Tom's way. Others can collect when a layer gets passed between users or as other people log into the PC. I actually went through every layer on my laptop earlier this week (all thirty-three of them!) and deleted all SID folders in the file system redirect area other than my own. Probably took me half an hour, only to remember when I was done that I still needed to go do the same thing in the registry redirect area if I wanted to be thorough. Ready to move on to a more productive task, I just groaned and let it go. There wouldn't be as much real value in a clean up tool like this as there would be in a Layer Press tool, but for neat freaks like me it would be appreciated.

Excelsior!