We are thinking about the installer for our app, and my partner is
thinking of a universal installer of some sort for Windows and Mac.
I don't see his reasoning, but I want to check a couple of things
with you folks before I say "that is a lousy idea"! )I want to use
PackageMaker.)
It is commercial and some would consider expensive ($1199 for multi-
platform including very good Windows, MacOS X and Linux support, or
$399 for Windows only). For the engineering time it saves us it's an
absolute bargain. InstallShield also offers a similar package that
has more power (esp. for Windows) but is more expensive.
InstallAnyware is another one I've used, is similar but with a tad
more features than Install4j, and more expensive. There are of course
many others but those are the ones I've used personally.
So, two questions:
1 The app requires Java 5. If our users need to upgrade their Java,
it looks like the best way to handle that is by pointing them at
Apple's website for a new version. That means an 80Mb download, but
I don't see any reasonable alternative. Is there another way of
getting a Java upgrade that I have missed, one which is not so big?
(I am against bundling the latest Java with our app, that sends our
package size from around 6Mb to 86Mb, which my poor 28k dialup
can't handle.)
In most cases your best alternative is to do the full bundle. There
are some licensing steps you'll have to take otherwise and that means
lawyers which always ends up being expensive and slow (technically
simple but I guess it's not really a technical issue at all).
If you use Install4j (or InstallShield/InstallAnyware) for most
platforms they provide JVM bundles that you can host on any web
server, include in the installer, and optionally make an install-time
download (the installer checks for an already installed valid
version, and if not found, informs the user that it needs to download
the jvm, downloads and installs the jvm in the background, and then
continues the install). The JVM bundles do tend to be smaller in size
because everything other than the JVM itself is stripped out. If I
recall correctly the jvm 1.5 bundles were running in the low 20MB
range. You can also mark a jvm as a "private jvm" which only is used
with your java app - handy if your app relies on a specific JVM
release and you don't want to interfere with any existing JVMs the
user may have on their machine. A godsend for QA esp when you're
doing GUI stuff. In addition to the standard installation, for our
purposes (server applications) they also provide helper features like
startup items on Mac and Windows services, splash screen support, and
the ability to do scripted and/or headless installations by simply
checking off some boxes in the installer-maker GUI.
I'm not affiliated with these commercial installer companies but have
been a satisfied customer. I'm definitely not going to code an
installer in C ever again. :)
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