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I am trying to use Advanced Installer as an application installer and auto-updater. Most of the resources is available on Advanced Installer website only.
Have any one used it before? I would like to hear more about bugs / stability issues if there are, especially auto-update feature
Regarding the bug/stability issues, you can see from the release history the frequency on auto-updater bug fixes (six this year - four in v9.2 and one each in v9.1.1, v9.0.1 and v9.0).
What I've noticed is that occurring issues are promptly solved.
I posted earlier the following:
I have used the free version of Advanced Installer, including its auto-update feature, and I have not experienced any problems with it.
Please note that I was talking about the ability of Advanced Installer MSI scripts to automatically remove older files when upgrading to a newer version of a program. I was not talking about the ability of the application to check for an update automatically. That's probably not in the free feature-set.
I have used advanced Installer It is really good.I would recommend to use it if you are developing a msi setup file for web applications.It is even integrated
with several other tools used for developing such as wix,inno setuo etc
I have not used Advanced Installer, however, just wanted to refer InstallJammer which is a multiplatform installer http://www.installjammer.com/, which I have been using to create application installer and easy to use and configure.
I am using the Advanced Installer daily for my work . I can say that their manuals are not helpful enough, especially for people who do not have any experience with those tools
. However if you pay for support , they can help you almost immediately .
For sure there are some limits about this tools especially if you want your build to be MSI the UI will not respond as well as the exe - but i know they are trying to fix this issue .
If you learn how to use it FOR sure you are going to like it.
The nice part about advanced installer is that they collect analytics (you have to pay for this feature ) and they can show you how many downloads per day , or how many users chose option 1 rather than option 2.
Or you can send those statistics to your webserver and with POST can manipulate however you want - which is free!
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Suppose I have a freshly compiled and tested 100 MB software. I want to eventually distribute it and sell it online as a product. This is a cross-platform product (done in C++).
What are the needed technical steps to achieve this? For each step, a description and an example of some software (if pertinent) would help. Also, how important is it would be helpful too.
My problem is that it is not really clear what are the stages to go through to release a software online. This list would help me a lot to know what steps I should investigate in priority.
What I am not talking about / interested in (because it is mainly the results I got while searching for this):
Website building;
Marketing & Sales;
Continuous Integration servers;
Steam, Mac Store, Windows Store;
Open Source.
Steps I identified:
Obfuscate: not sure about this one;
Licensing System: activation code system integrated in the software directly (See Digital River, SafeNet, Reprise, Flexera);
Installers: MSI for Windows (see Wix), DMG for mac;
Code Signing: ensures that your users do not get warnings (Verisign, GlobalSign...)
Free Trial Distribution: putting the installers on our own site is risky because of bandwidth and lags. Your users should be able to download a free trial quickly wherever they are. So a CDN would help (AWS CloudFront).
Auto Update System: notifiy the users, download and install new versions (Omaha);
Activation: this allows the user to activate the product online or directly from within the product;
I think that these two steps are the missing pieces in your list:
Write documentation (in your case PDF/RTF/HTML, or online tutorial)
Integrate a payment provider that will accept the payment on behalf of you
With the above two steps you should be ready to go.
There are some books that I can recommend you (they are 10 year old now, but you see shareware/try before you buy/ software is an old thing - nowadays people tend to write web apps or mobile mostly):
http://www.alibris.com/From-Program-to-Product-Turning-Your-Code-Into-a-Saleable-Product-Rocky-Smolin/book/10572213?matches=50
http://www.alibris.com/Micro-Isv-From-Vision-to-Reality-Bob-Walsh/book/9122742?matches=37
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I am looking for an installer solution like it is used for Google Chrome:
When you click Download, you don't actually download the installer, but a very small Downloader, which then downloads the Chrome Installer, and launches it afterwards.
I know Sweet Labs is developing Ignite, but it is still in closed beta.
Are there any similar solutions out there, which are ready to use?
How about Google Omaha? (Actually used by Google Chrome) It seems to be the thing.
The Omaha project provides a shared autoupdate and install system for
Windows client products at Google that works on multiple Windows
platforms, including Windows Vista. Goals include the following:
One autoupdate mechanism which allows teams to roll out updates with no dependencies on other product teams, without having to write
their own client or server logic One autoupdate server that handles
all autoupdate requests - each product team will not need to roll out
and manage their own server One desktop autoupdate client shared by
all desktop client software - there will not be separate programs
running for each installed application
A tiny meta-installer which includes the update client (and knows how to install it if necessary) and a reference to the desired
application which the update client can then download and install
One-click web install of applications once the update client is installed
Support for rich update deploy logic allowing multiple tracks for public release, beta, development and "canary" experiments
Support for restricted user environments; for example, users without administrator privileges
Providing a shared runtime for other functionality common to all Google client applications: Crash reporting
Advanced Installer can do that too. It creates a small executable that can launch an MSI package from an URL you specify, so the package downloaded by the user is very small. As a bonus, you can split the application in features, and set it to create one CAB archive for each feature, so the actual install process will download only the CAB files for the features installed, reducing the download time for users that don't install all the features.
To have the user see only a small progress bar instead of full MSI dialogs you just need to tick a checkbox from Install Parameters page.
However, you should now that this feature is available only in the commercial licenses, you need at least a Professional license. You can test it, during the trial period access to all of its features is not restricted.
I now have this quite complete list of solutions:
Google Omaha
AdvancedInstaller
Somoto BetterInstaller ( + adds recommendations from which you make money)
Ignite (not available yet)
Or possibly create your own using the WiX Toolset, NSIS or Inno Setup.
All of those are free solutions, except for AdvancedInstaller. It has a free edition too, but cannot be used to create this package type; for this you need at least a Professional edition.
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Lets say that me and my friend are trying to work on same software project. We are not located on same location but we wish to be as productive is possible.
We are using Visual Studio 2005, the code has to be written in C/C++ and at this moment we send the code using zip files.
My questions are:
1) what approach should be used sharing code in order to be more productive.
2) are there any free online platforms good for that?
3) do you have any advice for us?
ps: I own a webserver account with linux hosting. What can i install on that server in order to improve our working status.
A source control server, ala svn server, or whichever is your preference.
You can commit your code, and your friend can then update his based on your changes, without having to send or receive email.
Most source control suites also have built-in merge handling too, so you can see the changes he made and solve any collisions with any changes you've made.
Update
People have begun recommending some good online source control, so I'll also add links to other questions for online source control hosts. Have a look at those too.
On top of version control which has been mentioned a few times already, you should also look into a project management tool such as Redmine(http://www.redmine.org/) or Trac(http://trac.edgewall.org/).
I find it can really help the efficiency of a team, especially when meeting face to face isn't always an option.
Use versioning control software. Free subversion hosting lists:
http://www.straw-dogs.co.uk/09/20/6-free-svn-project-hosting-services/
http://cplus.about.com/b/2007/07/24/free-subversion-hosting-for-small-projects.htm
You can also find more googleling.
In addition to souce control, you might also sign-up for a free, hosted issue tracking tool like bughost.com.
For the immediate win, any sort of version control system.
Install and set up subversion on Linux, get AnkhSVN if you want to integrate it with Visual Studio or TortoiseSVN for Windows explorer integration.
I use subversion repositories hosted on dreamhost for collaborative projects. Dreamhost's hosting is not free, but it is relatively cheap - on the order of $100 a year. I think there is also a discount still in place for SO podcast listeners.
You can also set up your own subversion server in your home or office. It is easiest to do on a Linux box, but I have also done it on a Windows 2000 Server machine using cygwin. There is a good tutorial on this here: http://www.coderhaus.com/?p=8
I've had a very good experience with Git and GitHub.
The first thing I really recommend you is to use Source Control, Subversion can be a really good alternative.
In addition what was said earlier, you might want to check out a distributed VCS.
For example, GIT or Mercurial.
You can setup up 1 svn repository and up to 3 users for free on Beanstalk.
based on what you describe I think git will work well for you as a source code control tool.
My advice would be
Use a D-VCS such as git or Mercurial. It is designed for distrubted teams.
Use a project managment tool such as base camp to manage your project.
Talk to each other regularly. Get Skype set up and if possible try and communicate once or twice daily. Email is sometimes not an effective medium for communication.
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I manage a small group and I'd keep my work breakdown in project. However, it's difficult to provide my team with an adequate view into the project and ability to report on their progress. I looked at MS Project Server (the sharepoint webpart) but it's an expensive proposition.
Has anyone had any experience with any other tool (commercial is fine) that helps team view and report on their work as managed by MS Project? FWIW, I have looked at OpenProj and it appears to be a decent solution for viewing project files on the desktop. Anything web-based, keeping in mind that I'd like people to report on their work not just view their work.
**A good web based hosted Project Management software that suits my EPM needs is called valleyspeak project server, which I found at www.valleyspeak.com. One of the main reasons why I like the software is the fact that I could continue to work in Microsoft Project 2007 while sharing my Microsoft Project plans with my teams.
Because it is a hosted service, I did not have to buy expensive software or deal with installation and maintenance headaches. The functionality that I have with valleyspeak to manage my geographically dispersed teams works well for me.**
Not exactly the tool rather technology, but i lately start reading about scrum and find it interesting and useful.
As "llya" suggested before maybe you should have a look at scrum as a methodology.
But on your question here you have some really good web-based alternatives:
acunote works pretty well also, and is web based and free for small teams.
The one I personally use trac
scrumworks
Here are a few open source apps to look at:
Joynet Connector
http://joyent.com/connector/
Clocking IT
http://www.clockingit.com/
RedMine
http://www.redmine.org/
You can host them your self, but the first two do offer hosted versions
Jason
You could try Work Bench.
Take a look at www.ibnportal.com
Take a look at Projec.to online Microsoft Project viewer. It allows to upload MS Project files (.mpp), view them online, and share with others via browser, apart from Microsoft Project.
Disclosure: I'm one of the developers of this service.
Daptiv might be worth a look. http://www.daptiv.com/
Try InTask Professional (www.intaskrnd.com) - fast, cheap, tons of features, multi-user multi project, frequent updates. really good piece of software. alternatively you can try basecamp but it's much more expensive...
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I've recently begun evaluating a few project management projects for the company I work for. It's the classic case - growing company looking for the right solution (meaning, free or really cheap). It's a combination shop - Windows, Macs, and Linux on the desktop. The tech savviness, of course, ranges from newbie to unix guru.
I have yet to find anything really close to a total solution. I don't expect to find one, but I am looking for suggestions/guidance/any sort of feedback based on people's experience.
What I'm looking for:
web based
methodology independent (not looking for an agile solution, etc.)
free or really cheap
document management
timelines and milestones
task tracking and assigning
reporting
source control
development wiki
I've looked at Trac, Projectivity, Basecamp, JIRA, RT, XPlanner, and SharedPlan. I've stayed away from Bugzilla due to previous unhappy experiences with it. None of these things really does everything - some are extendable, but I'd check here before going down that path.
Thanks,
Read through Edward Tufte's long-running Ask E.T. topic Project Management Graphics (or Gantt Charts). There is no consensus answer, but a lot of things have been evaluated.
link text
Trac - integration of tickets / wiki / commit-comments is great.
Caveat: installation can be PITA...
Check out Jira Studio. All of Atlassian's apps, hosted for you.
http://www.jira.com/
You get wiki/tracker/svn browser and more.
Have a look at Redmine, it's a Rails app. Haven't used it yet myself, but thinking about moving to it from activecollab. This applications seems to be evolved quite fast last year.
My experience of Jira (with Confluence for the wiki) has been rather good, although it is quite pricey the support people were very responsive and helpful. The place where I used that had svn for version control, and the two played together OK. On the other hand I found Xplanner to be a very odd app - really inflexible if you don't want to be doing XP, and surprisingly documentation-centric for an XP shop.
If you don't mind doing a bit of configuration yourself and have a windows server somewhere in your shop then you could set up your very own customized project management system in SharePoint.
* web based
* methodology independent
* free or really cheap
* document management
* timelines and milestones
* task tracking and assigning
* reporting
* source control
* development wiki
The source control system is not a part of SharePoint so it is really a question whether that requirement is paramount or not. But besides that you will have all of the above for free if you install WSS (comes free with a 2003/2008 server)
There is even a book from O'Reilly about how to set up a PMIS in SharePoint
One solution for the more visual of us would be to use Drupal 6x. with the Project and Subversion (now Version Control) modules. I prefer Joomla with ProjectFork, but until its modded with a repo browser, this will have to do.
Hope this helps.
http://drupal.org/project/project
I looked hard at Alfresco and Joomla.
None met my needs because I wanted the ultimate in simplicity. But, you seem to prefer having the kitchen sink included (while keeping it easy to use, I guess), so either one of these might be right for you.
Currently, I'm throwing together my own using Django, keeping only the project-deadline, forum and file-versioning concepts.