HTA Archive Bundles - bundle

I am writing a small HTA file to do a simple report for myself. I would like to bundle multiple resources into a single file for distribution (images, javascript, etc.)
As I was perusing the MS documentation I came across a reference to HTA Archives: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee332530.aspx. Unfortunately, the documentation has been removed (even before the WayBack Machine got a look at it).
What is the best way to distribute related items? Is there an HTA Archive format?

The best way would be to put your HTA in the root of a zip file. All your resources could be in an assets folder, and any libraries could be in a lib folder. This is pretty much industry standard. Or you could host all your files on a web server and have the user download a batch script that uses BITSADMIN.exe to copy the files to the local machine and build the filetree. I could help with this as I have used this method to distribute small projects before.

Related

Appcelerator with expansion files

Has anyone successfully used expansion files with appcelerator? I have found the module that is supposed to let us work with them, however I am running into the problem of the .obb file being downloaded directly from the play store and then being downloaded again with the module. Aside from that I can't seem to get access to any of the files contained within the .obb using the module.
I have heard all of the woes of having a big app, so please don't just tell me to make a smaller app, my client has a large "library" that they want installed directly on the app. It consists of html files that call javascript files and images through relative paths.
Are expansion files even the way to go with this? Should I simply zip up my files and download them after, unpack them, and access them using the file system? I am just looking for a way to get these large files onto the device and access them as if they were in the resources directory of the app.
Any help would be appreciated. thanks!
I have an app that needs over 300 PNG images and text files (to populate a database with) and could not get the app small enough to put up on the Play Store. What I ended up doing was create a barebones app (enough to get the user started) then I download the files on start up. I didn't mess with zipping everything (the data is constantly being updated), but if the information you have is pretty static, you could zip it. Once the download successfully finishes and installs the data, it sets an app property (Ti.App.Properties.setInt) 0 is never ran, 1 is partial download and 2 is download is installed (you can do this however you want, but that's what I did).

Making folder containing executable into executable

I have a folder which contains an executable file (Exec.exe) and a lot of files that Exec.exe needs to run. Currently, it's pretty ugly having all of those files there when I only need to run the one executable. Is there any way to bundle them all into another executable that runs Exec.exe and also contains all of the files Exec.exe needs to run? Thanks for any help!
Yes, but I would recommend you only do it if you need to.
You can achieve this by adding your files as resources in your exe project, so they are added into the exe's binary at compile time. You can then access the files directly from your exe at runtime by using LoadResource and related functions. I'd recommend reading up on the Portable Executable (PE) file format if you're considering this route.
This is the way to do it if you, and again I stress, need to have only a single binary where you can still access your files. There are obvious downsides to doing this, such as it's much more coding to access the data as it's embedded in your application binary, and you can't easily update the files (check out resource hacker tool) without re-compiling your binary to include the new data.
If the only reason you want to do this is because it's "pretty ugly" seeing the additional files in the same directory as your exe, consider moving them into another directory, for example,
from:
MyExeDir
--myExe.exe
--myFile1.txt
--myFile2.dll
--myFile3.dat
to:
MyExeDir
--myExe.exe
--dat
----myFile1.txt
----myFile2.png
----myFile3.dat
or:
MyExeDir
--bin
----myExe.exe
--dat
----myFile1.txt
----myFile2.png
----myFile3.dat
So all the "ugly" looking files are out of the way.
Why don't you create a shortcut of "Exec.exe" and keep it somewhere handy ? If whats that you want ?
Or if you want to distribute your app, you can use Winrar/Winzip (winrar is the best) to create a compressed .exe of your entire folder, making "Exec.exe" as your startup app. Use the SFX option in winrar.

Including template files in Go executable

I want to parse a folder of template HTML files and cache (or buffer) them on build for later use in a web project. Basically I am trying to make it so when I build my project I dont need to take the HTML files with me when I upload the executable file.
I think maybe you are talking about embedding the html files in your binary?
If so the best way to do this that I've seen so far has been camlistores fileembed: https://code.google.com/p/camlistore/source/browse/pkg/fileembed/fileembed.go
See here for directions on use: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/golang-nuts/LQMv7Zsmsi0/8Aax1XSekjAJ
That thread has addtional info on other packages for this as well.

Watch a folder constantly for new files

I have a web folder on a Mac (running MAMP Pro) and have files been added within it on the fly, whose URL is as follows .
http://abc.com/folder/
I have another Windows machine that should constantly watch this folder and download any new file that gets dumped to this web folder to c:\macfolder\ (The files are always tsv's).
I know I can use wget to acquire files and run whatever program that would do this as a scheduler in windows to watch constantly, but whats the best way to watch this folder for the new files.
Thanks
P.S I do not know what are the best tags for this question. Help me out with that too.. :P
Since the directory already is mounted on Windows, your question appears to be a duplicate of this (and related) - assuming you're OK using C# to build such a tool:
Monitoring a directory for new file creation without FileSystemWatcher
If not so keen on the C# tool, there are command line solutions like this one here:
batch file to monitor additions to download folder

Expose setup in what file format: zip, exe,..?

this may be a stupid question... but I have created a setup.exe using Installshield that installs my application. I cannot use an MSI because I want to include prerequisites, like for example .NET 4.0 framework web install.
So, I put this setup.exe on my web site somewhere, but when I try to download this I get 'The page you are requesting cannot be served because of the ISAPI and CGI Restriction list settings on the Web server.' Obviously a security is going on that makes it impossible to download executables.
So I zip it to setup.zip, and now it can be downloaded.
My question is: what is the best way to distribute such a setup via the web? Is it acceptable to make it a zip file for users to download (because then they have to unzip it first), or should I just allow an executable to be downloaded?
I've seen this practice for some products and it's always annoying. Why would you give me a ZIP file which contains a setup file? There are no advantages, but a lot of disadvantages:
I need to perform an extra step to extract the ZIP
I need twice the disk space (the ZIP plus what's inside it)
Most users don't see a ZIP file as an installer, they are used to "setup.exe" or "setup.msi"
The correct approaches are:
configure your website to allow EXE file downloads
or
distribute a ZIP which contains your application files (instead of using a setup file)

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