maintain multiple versions of Windows CE (QFEs)

Question

We build firmware using Windows CE (6 and 7) on a Windows XP system. We often install the QFEs (CE patches/updates) from Microsoft as they are released. When we have to go back to a certain release to develop a patch, it can be a real pain because we will need to build a system with the same patch level that existed on the system at the time that the product was released. Is there any easy way to maintain a QFE history that can easily be reverted at any given time? Something along the lines of snapshotting the system state as it pertains to the CE install/QFEs at each release? We don't want to use virtual machine snapshots or anything that controls the state of anything outside of the Windows CE components for this. It is a pretty specific requirement, so I am guessing no, but perhaps someone has tackled this exact problem.

Answer 1

I understand that you're saying you don't want to use VMs, though I'm not entirely sure why. I'd recommend at least thinking about it.

Back when I controlled builds for multiple platforms across multiple OS versions, I used Virtual Machines for this. Each VM was a bare snapshot of a PC with the tools and SDKs installed. A build script would then pull the source for each BSP and build it nightly. They key is to maintain and archive "clean" VMs (without source) and just pitch the changes after doing builds. It was way faster and way cleaner than trying to keep the WINCEROOT for each QFE level in source control and pulling that - you have to reset the machine to zero in that case anyway to be confident of no cross-pollution between levels.