I am looking for a recommendation on an installer program. The installer needs to support mulitple OS's - Solaris, Linux and Windows. I have three build machines each running one of the OS's. Currently using the same code base - JAVA and C/C++ for all three.
InstallAnywhere seems to be the dominant player.
IzPack is a an open source software installer generator. All you need is a JRE on the target platform.
Maybe is my personal opinion but I think that the installer is probably the only thing that you may want to keep platform specific and here is why:
it is good to integrate with platform specific deployment systems like: RPM or DEB on Linux, DMG on OS X or MSI under Windows. By using them and allowing both UI and silent installation you will easy the installation of the product for individuals and also for enterprise environments - where it's common to push the installations to the clients.
you can add move the configuration screens outside the installer and trigger them first time when the user runs your application
also do not forget to minimize installer complexity - each "feature" you add will cost you more specially on QA.
You can take a look at BitRock InstallBuilder It supports all the platforms you mention, and it does not depend on Java (though you can use it to install Java programs, in fact many of our customers use it for that, including Sun Microsystems :)
Does it need to be a client-based installer for wide distribution, or just intranet?
For corporate LANs, sometimes setting up a Java Webstart page is the best solution; the customers always have access, they can make desktop shortcuts to the launcher to run just like a standard application, and you have absolute control for pushing updates.
Related
I already cross-compiled my program for Windows, I now have an EXE and a directory which must reside alongside that EXE in the same directory.
So I need to create an MSI, that places them in the appropriate place (whatever that is) and handles the uninstall too, in a way that is organic with the operative system.
There are Windows tools that do just that, but I haven't been able to find any for OS X. Is there any?
tl;dr:
I am on OS X
I cross-compiled my program for Windows
using OS X, I need to create an installer for Windows, such as an MSI
I DO NOT need to create an installer for OS X, such as a DMG or whatever. I need to create an installer -->FOR<-- Windows, such as an MSI.
I just "happen" to be trying to use OS X to do it.
Using Wine only counts if that program is known to run fine with Wine.
Using a Virtual Machine doesn't count since it is using Windows, which is what I ruled out in this question.
It seems that msi-packager is your solution.
"Build MSI (Windows Installer) packages on Mac and Linux."
https://www.npmjs.com/package/msi-packager
Would it be acceptable to create an EXE-based installer instead of an MSI?
I use InstallBuilder to build installers on OS/X. InstallBuilder is a cross-platform program. There is a version that runs on OS/X and builds both EXE installers for Windows (though I have not tried that combination), as well as DMG/APPs for OS/X.
The InstallBuilder documentation mentions that it cannot build MSIs, because InstallBuilder provides functionality for which there is no equivalent in MSI.
I suggest installing InstallBuilder on your Mac, selecting "Windows" as your output format, and see what happens.
InstallBuilder is one of the better installer builders that I've worked with. It's powerful and comprehensive. Not cheap though. At $995, it's till cheaper than spinning your wheels with WiX. There is a free trial version.
Although WiX is not available for OSX, there's a port of it using the wine library. You can find it in msitools as wixl which can easily installed through brew.
brew install msitools
It sounds like you're looking for the DMG Installer specification for Mac. It's a similar function as MSI in that it is a single file containing the install components needed for an app.
Keep in mind that Mac OSX apps are very different. They are more similar to Windows directories than EXE's. They contain a sub-folder structure which includes the components of the app. If you right click on a Mac app and select "Show Package Contents" you will see a "Contents" top tier folder with everything underneath the app. Just mentioning that as it greatly impacts the lack of need for an uninstall as you simply highlight an app and click delete to remove it and all of its components. There are exceptions of course, but Mac users appreciate when dev's stick to this format.
For DMG this link may help: Demystifying the DMG
I need your help in choosing a Mac OS X installer version for my application, since I'm not a native Mac user (I am a Windows user).
As far as I know there are two popular installer versions: the regular setup wizard, and the one that uses a window in which you drag the file into the applications folder. Which is preferred and why?
If your application is entirely self contained with all its resources bundled in a single .app package (which is the preferred structure for Mac applications) then use drag and drop installation. If it isn't possible to bundle your application in this way then use an installer .pkg.
There may be other solutions that are appropriate for certain types of application. For example I develop a large Java application that runs on many platforms (including Mac) and we use IzPack to build one installer JAR that works on all platforms. We then package this up as an .exe for Windows users (using Launch4J) and as a .app bundle for Mac users.
If you are not familiar with command line tools or simply not inclined, I would recommend two different IDEs:
Packages - a free and great way to create OSX Installer packages. It is simple to use out of the box, but has great depth for conditional installs.
http://s.sudre.free.fr/Software/Packages/about.html
DMGPackager - shareware - a simple app to create DMG with optional backgrounds, licenses etc.
http://www.skoobysoft.com/utilities/dmgp.html
If you want to distribute, it would be best to sign the installer.
All of the documentation I have seen regarding distribution of Adobe AIR apps suggests that an installer is required to be run in order to get the runtime and the app onto a system.
The environment I am working in requires the AIR runtime, the AIR app and associated DLL's (it will be calling Windows native processes) to be transferred to a clean system and this needs to happen without running an install package. Ideally in the form of just copying the necessary files (DLL's, resources etc..) to where they need to be. Scripts can be used for tasks like adding registry keys and similar requirements. The build needs to be automated in the form of a copy, hence why no installer packages are suitable.
Does anyone know whether this is at all possible with Adobe AIR? Note, the app is Windows-only so cross platform is not a requirement.
Thank you in advance for your help
I'm adding more details in this answer.
In order to use NativeProcess your app must be an EXE compiled by ADT using "extended-desktop." I didn't find much documentation ont his, but a normal air app installs silently like this
C:\AdobeAIRInstaller.exe -silent -eulaAccepted "C:\yourApp.air"
Since the ADT compiled EXE already contains air, you can acutally just do this
C:\yourApp.EXE -silent -eulaAccepted -location "\"C:\WhereToInstall\""
I don't believe you need a redistributable license to do this... but I could be wrong. It's easy to get and free so you might as well.
Where yourAPP.EXE is the extended desktop AIR app compiled by ADT. For compiling an EXE by ADT see: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/air/build/WS789ea67d3e73a8b22388411123785d839c-8000.html
No; this won't be possible. You'll have to install the AIR Runtime on the Windows machine to run an AIR app. And I expect the AIR app won't actually run w/o running the AIR App installer.
You may be able to look into alternate non-AIR options to turn SWFs into EXE. Zinc is one such software to do that.
Or it is possible you can create an invisible installer. I believe if you sign up for redistribution of the AIR Runtime there is a way to make the runtime installer "invisible". I'm not sure about the app, though.
we have a small app that doing trivial stuff, no GUI.
we was using Linux, but the library/framework available for Linux is highly less than that for windows, it was such a pain to develop under Linux.
So we want to use windows, but windows is too big for the trivial app, is there any solution that i can use windows and not losing OS's lightweight?
any advices appreciated.
What kind of applications are you building?
1) some older versions of windows have less bloat, but you wouldn't want these running on public networks because they don't get security updates. Plus, the latest/greatest libraries may not run on them
2) If you're running command-line server utilities, you could try Windows 2008 Server Core, which is a console-only installation
3) You might want to try Wine or Mono to run your windows/.NET framework-based application.
You should try a "Windows PE" (sometimes also called "minint") installation (installation guide here), which is a trimmed-down version based on Windows XP or Vista.
This does not make sense, sorry. If you have a CLI program under Linux why shouldn't you be able to write on CLI program on Windows?
There are Live CDs that boot up an OS and allow you to use it without installation.
I was wondering if there is an easy way to customize a Live CD so that it only loads what is necessary to run one application, and runs that application.
With Ubuntu I used the Ubuntu Customization Kit to customize an Ubuntu Live CD that loaded the stuff I needed by default in my computer.
For some values of "easy way" yes, but in most cases no.
If the required OS is Windows, you'll find a lot of information if you check out BartPE. You'll have licensing problems if you don't understand that you can't distribute windows OS, even on a livecd, without MS licenses for each copy.
Linux livecds are a little more complex to create, but there are many people making the process easier, http://www.linux-live.org/ is a great resource to get started.
-Adam
That depends what you mean by "easy way". If you're comfortable installing and administering an OS to be secure and stable, you shouldn't have much trouble creating a LiveCD for that OS with the software you need installed and auto-running. Much more detail depends very much on the OS and type of application you're trying to run.