[kepler-dev] Installer

[Christopher Brooks]

"Deepak Shankar" <deepak.shankar at mirabilisdesign.com> writes:
> 
> Hello Christopher,
>  
> Hope you are doing fine.  I noticed on the Ptolemy Groups page that you
> were looking for a new installer.  A year ago we migrated to an
> open-source installer called IzPack.  This is now embedded into our ANT
> build process.  Also, we could easily add a number of custom windows and
> actions.  I am not sure if this is what you meant but just thought I
> will pass it along.
>  
> The Web Site for access is:
> http://www.izforge.com/izpack/start

Hi Deepak,

Thanks, your input is rather timely.  I just spent a few hours
looking in to free and non-free installers.

My notes are in $PTII/doc/coding/installers.htm.

There is a pretty good overview at
http://www.excelsior-usa.com/articles/java-to-exe.html

Excelsior-usa makes Jet, which can be used to generate
.exe files from Java apps.  Nonetheless, the article is a good
summary.

Macrovision has purchased Zerog, the makers of
Installanywhere, and after articles like this:
"Macrovision Wants Old DRM to Work Forever"
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/17/1824221
I'm fairly certain I want to use a different installer.

I'm currently trying out Advanced Installer, which is not
free, but is much less expensive than Installanywhere.

I'm hoping to take a look at IzPack. 

An installer needs to have an way to install a bundled JRE,
IzPack has a native launcher that might help:

 The IzPack native launcher will first check for a JRE on the target
 system. If one is found, then it will launch the installer. If no JRE
 can be found, then it will help the user in installing one either
 from the internet or from a bundled one.


I also need to be able to create submenus in the Start menu so that
we can have:
Ptolemy -> ptII6.0.1 -> vergil -full
		        vergil -hyvisual
			Design Doc v1 - intro

This eliminated Launch4j, which creates .exe files but does not appear
to handle creating Start menu entries.

_Christopher