Distributing projects.

[Daniel Pitts]

Hello,

I have a project that I've been working on, and its nearly ready for
beta distribution. It's on sourceforge if that makes any difference.

The program itself can be distributed as a single executable jar file,
but there are other files that should be included. For one thing, at
least some "getting started" documentation. For another thing, sample
files for use within the program. The samples should be part of the
default installation, because they will be useful to most people.

So, what are some common ways of handling this? I could build a couple
of distributions (.zip, .tgz, .tar.bz2), and let people install them
manually, but I'd rather make it as easy as possible.

Also, I have literally no budget for this, so any solution should be
free (free beer, not necessarily free speech). It is an open source
project if that makes other options available.

Thanks,
Daniel.

 

[Steve Sobol]

Hello,

I have a project that I've been working on, and its nearly ready for
beta distribution. It's on sourceforge if that makes any difference.

The program itself can be distributed as a single executable jar file,
but there are other files that should be included. For one thing, at
least some "getting started" documentation. For another thing, sample
files for use within the program. The samples should be part of the
default installation, because they will be useful to most people.

So, what are some common ways of handling this? I could build a couple
of distributions (.zip, .tgz, .tar.bz2), and let people install them
manually, but I'd rather make it as easy as possible.

Also, I have literally no budget for this, so any solution should be
free (free beer, not necessarily free speech). It is an open source
project if that makes other options available.

http://launch4j.sf.net to create a Windows executable
http://installjammer.com to create cross-platform installers.

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

I have a project that I've been working on, and its nearly ready for
beta distribution. It's on sourceforge if that makes any difference.

The program itself can be distributed as a single executable jar file,
but there are other files that should be included. For one thing, at
least some "getting started" documentation. For another thing, sample
files for use within the program. The samples should be part of the
default installation, because they will be useful to most people.

So, what are some common ways of handling this? I could build a couple
of distributions (.zip, .tgz, .tar.bz2), and let people install them
manually, but I'd rather make it as easy as possible.

Also, I have literally no budget for this, so any solution should be
free (free beer, not necessarily free speech). It is an open source
project if that makes other options available.

If the expected audience are developers then I would definitely
say just ZIP format. Very flexible and non-intrusive.

If the app is for ordinary end-users (the "where is the ANY key?"
type), then consider an installer.

Arne

 

[Tom Anderson]

If the expected audience are developers then I would definitely
say just ZIP format. Very flexible and non-intrusive.

+1, with the emphasis on non-intrusive. I would *much* rather have a zip
than an installer. I know what a zip's going to do when i open it, and i
get a chance to look at the contents before i do anything with them, and
then what i do is my decision. Installers take that autonomy away from me.
I'm even annoyed with RPMs because of this - i installed OpenJDK from an
RPM to play with the other day, and it made itself my default java. Not
what i wanted, and something that caused me some significant debugging
pain.

tom

 

[Knute Johnson]

Hello,

I have a project that I've been working on, and its nearly ready for
beta distribution. It's on sourceforge if that makes any difference.

The program itself can be distributed as a single executable jar file,
but there are other files that should be included. For one thing, at
least some "getting started" documentation. For another thing, sample
files for use within the program. The samples should be part of the
default installation, because they will be useful to most people.

So, what are some common ways of handling this? I could build a couple
of distributions (.zip, .tgz, .tar.bz2), and let people install them
manually, but I'd rather make it as easy as possible.

Also, I have literally no budget for this, so any solution should be
free (free beer, not necessarily free speech). It is an open source
project if that makes other options available.

Thanks,
Daniel.

The ancillary files can be included in the .jar file. The first time
the program is run it can extract those files from itself.

 

[Roedy Green]

Also, I have literally no budget for this, so any solution should be
free (free beer, not necessarily free speech). It is an open source
project if that makes other options available.

If the problem is frequent updates to pieces of this project, you
might look into the Replicator which keeps the clients copy of a group
of files in sync with your master copy. The client needs to run Java
Web Start. No fancy firewall stuff required. It is completely
multiplatform, no separate downloads.

see http://mindprod.com/products1.html#REPLICATOR

You might then distribute your project as a number of smaller jars,
individual javadoc files, individual scripts and bat files.

One way I see commonly done is a set of "distributions", e.g. zip, tar
....

You could use an installer. See
http://mindprod.com/jgloss/installer.html

Some are free. They will create various bundles for you for various
platforms with a little installer program to insert the files in a
directory selected by the user. Zero G had a free one a few years
ago. I was not all that impressed, but it did work. The poor quality
of installers is one of my pet peeves.

I just distribute a zip, and trust the techie audience will know what
to do from there. However, that is not really suitable for products
like my Canadian Tax calculator that has a primarily non-technical
audience. On my todo list is to use Jet's installer so Windows people
can have hand-holding installer. I trust Linux folk won't need the
hand holding.

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

If the problem is frequent updates to pieces of this project, you
might look into the Replicator which keeps the clients copy of a group
of files in sync with your master copy. The client needs to run Java
Web Start.

Isn't automatic update part of standard Java Web Start ??

Arne