I've an HTML5 application packaged into OpenFin environment. The complete package is inside an .Exe executable that we wish to ship to end users.
We tried to create a link to the executable that could be downloaded from a web link - but seems most of the company' security permissions environments/firewalls block .Exe file downloads.
Our requirement is to ship the .EXE file (we do not have certain files - so may not be able to effectively create a clickonce deployment package)
Is there a better way, even using ClickOnce to ship the .Exe via web url?
You can wrap exe into a zip and can ship..
Related
I have an app that I am moving to another server. It is complaining that it is missing TABCTL32.OCX. I have located this file on another server and I want to copy and paste it across.
I have discovered that there is also a file called TABCTL32.DEP on the server I am moving from. Do I have to copy both files across or is the dependency file optional?
I have tried it with an without the DEP. The app works in both cases. It is a production server so I want to be sure.
Those .DEP (depdendency) files are instructions about a library meant to be used by packaging tools. These files have no run-time significance, containing only development metadata. They are text files.
They contain the preferred ("designed") location to install the library, sub-dependencies of the library including optional localization "satellite" resource DLLs, version information, etc.
See articles such as INFO: How Setup Wizard and PDW Use Dependency Files.
This is information a packager should use along with other "rules databases" such as VB6DEP.ini. Programmers are also supposed to create them if they expect other developers to use their libraries.
If you are using an "impaired" 3rd party packaging technology that is ignorant of .DEP files it is up to you to read them and incorporate the information they contain in your build process. You are also responsible as a developer to keep your dev machine's .DEP files and VB6DEP.ini file up to date, since they often are not updated by Microsoft anymore.
You can't just copy files willy-nilly from one machine to another. Go find this program's installer and run it on the new machine.
A .dep file is a file used by the Visual Basic Setup Wizard to determine what dependencies your ocx file have. You can open the file with Windows Notepad to view the contents.
Unless you are using the Visual Basic Package and Deploy Wizard, you can ignore this file.
For more info, see INFO: How Setup Wizard and PDW Use Dependency Files
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)
How to create installer for web application to run on both Windows and Linux? I need no more than extact some jar, jsp and xml files into a chosen directory. (Web server and database should be already installed, when our app is installed)
There can be two output files - one for Windows, one for Linux.
http://izpack.org/ is a fully-fledged cross-platform java installer-generator, and it's awesome.
But I'm not sure you need that exactly ..
I think, maybe, you just want a .war file? (i.e. a web application archive)
Here's an old article about war files:
http://java.sun.com/j2ee/tutorial/1_3-fcs/doc/WCC3.html
Our product, BitRock InstallBuilder is a multiplatform installer that can do what you want. It is commercial but we have discounts for small companies and free licenses for open source projects. For example of web applications packaged with BitRock, check Bitnami
We have an installer for our application that must be downloaded and run with administrator privileges, like many other installers. However, the installer isn't named "setup.exe", so Windows doesn't automatically detect it as requiring elevation to run.
Changing the installer name to make things elevate properly sounds pretty messy, frankly. This article talks a lot about UAC and elevation, and it says that you can use a manifest to make something require authorization.
So, we'd just love to create a manifest for our installer. However, how do we ensure the manifest is present? If the user just downloads our_application_v13.exe, how do we ensure they get the manifest too? AFAIK the manifest would have to be a file named "our_application_v13.exe.manifest" in that case.
Since they're just downloading a file from our web site, how do we make sure they get the manifest too? Can we build it into the executable in some way, or otherwise flag the executable as requiring elevation? We are using an installer tool from hundreds of years ago that we can't change, so it doesn't have any capabilities relevant to this.
Thanks!
If the installer tool allows you to change/attach/edit the resources of the generated EXE file, you can add the manifest file as a resource with a resource type of 24 (RT_MANIFEST in the windows headers) and a resource id of 1.
If The installer tool does not have the built in facility to insert resources, then you might have to write a tool to post-process your install.exe file to insert the resource. Look up the Windows APIs BeginUpdateResouce and EndUpdateResource. They have some limitations - they tend not to work if the EXE doesn't already contain any resource files at all, but most install tool generated exe files contain at least a version info resource.
Also, if the install is digitally signed that will have to be done after insertion of the manifest resource.
Also, mt.exe included with the Platform SDK and most versions of visual studio has options to embed, extract and merge manifest resources.
The manifest can also be in the application's native resource section (inside the EXE).
There is Resource Tuner Console from Heaventools Software.
Resource Tuner Console is a command-line tool that enables developers to automate post-processing of your install exe file and insert the manifest resource. See specifically the Adding Application Manifest page for greater details:
http://www.heaventools.com/rtconsole-embed-manifest.htm
How to run the exe file to other system?
Using VB 6
I copied the exe file to other system, then run that exe file, it not working it showing error
“component comdlg32.ocx or one its dependencies not correctly registered a file is missing or invalid”`
Can any one help me how to avoid this error?
When deploying VB6 applications, you should create a Setup, this will manage the DLL's that the VB6 application depends on. Since it is not enough to just copy the .Exe and .Dll's. You also need to register them.
The creation of the setup is included in the VB6 environment.
You can read this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/830761 which is very comprehensive.
1: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/830761 for more information.
Or if you just want the redistributable files check this kb http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290887
Copy and register the comdlg32.ocx on other system. Link: Fix Missing Comdlg32.ocx Run time Error in Portable apps.
Create an installer for your program.
Unless you are deploying your program to really old versions of Windows (prior to XP), one nice alternative is to create an XCopy package using reg-free COM. This is fairly easy for most simple programs using Make My Manifest though it can be done by hand or using other tools if you invest in a little study.
Even then a formal installer package is usually desireable though, if nothing else to create Start Menu shortcuts and set up application workspace directories.
Keep in mind that even the PDWizard is difficult to use blindly. Packaging and deployment is a topic that requires some learning investment.
Outdated or missing comdlg32.ocx runtime library is causing this error. Here is a copy of comdlg32.ocx (~60 Kb Zip). Download the file to the Desktop and extract the comdlg32.ocx to your the Windows\System32 folder.
Note: If you already have a copy of comdlg32.ocx, backup the existing file to a different folder and delete it from System32 folder.
1. Download comdlg32.zip and save to Desktop.
2. Unzip the file using WinZip or any other utility.
3. Extract comdlg32.ocx to Windows\System32 folder.
4. Type the following command from Start, Run dialog:
regsvr32 %Systemroot%\System32\comdlg32.ocx
Typically a VB 6 app will consist of an .exe some .dll libraries and a config.ini file. The exe is the starting place and it consumes the dll's and config.ini and other resources to run => you have to have all parts in the same directory for the app to run typically called "packaging" an app. E.g. An installer simply ensures that all those files in a packaged app are placed on a users computer in an Windows application directory, and creates a shortcut launch icon so that a user can click the shortcut in the start bar and the app will run.
To "package" your app (put the dll's and exe in the same folder) you can use an Add-In called "Package and Deployment Wizard":
And here is a demo of using it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT7jaoAiKDo
You can either package and create an installer and package or just create a package:
Now if the Deployment Wizard doesnt show as an add-in on your VB6 Editor Installation, go to editor's program folder and find the tools Tools folder, i.e:
Then you should be able to find the Deployment Wizard there:
Open it to use it.