Things are gettin' serious :)

[ShawnBaxe]

Many months have passed since my return to the AmigaOS. I had enough time to get back into development for AmigaOS. Today I've contacted a local Amiga club. If everything works, I'll team up with them and start developing for the greates OS ever! My idea for the first project is a tool which makes it easy to create Installer scripts from scratch...at least a rough skeleton which can be edited by hand. I think such a tool would save precious time for any software developer out there. My idea is a multi-tabbed GUI which takes parameters like filenames, the gradient-values for the v44 installer which supports gradient backgrounds, appname and such stuff. A friend of mine came up with the idea to develop a wizard like found on windows which takes you to the ready-to-run installer step by step. I'm not sure which idea is better. Perhaps both of them in one? Any suggestions?

[Magic-Merl]

Personally, I don't think you need to waste time on a Wizard.

These were developed, initially, for a mainstream OS which has users of varying levels of ability.

I think the GUI is the way to go.  If a person has the skills required to be able to want to use an Installer app then it would be safe to assume they wouldn't need a wizard.

Develop your app.
Release it.
Build a userbase.
Develop the wizard (later) should your userbase require it.

Good luck.  I think it's a worthy idea which should see the light of day.  When it is complete - any chance of a port to AROS?

[ShawnBaxe]

An AROS port is possible. At this time I can't promise anything, but as far as I know, AROS' GUI system is similar to MUI, isn't it. I'll try to develop the code for file I/O in plain C (or maybe C++ cause classes are a nice way to implement such stuff), so it would be easy to port it. The only thing which would have to be rewritten would be the GUI part. As soon as the app is finished, I'll think about porting it. Btw. is the Installer available for AROS? Otherwise such a port wouldn't make sense.

[Cass]

The coolest feature of an installer would be the possibility to uninstall later that application... without deleting important/used files, or leaving garbadge to the HD.
I'd like to see this as part of the standard AmigaOS Installer.

P.S. For the time being, only a Log can help us uninstalling some app by hand.
________
Masturbation teen

[Trev]

InstallerNG's logging facility can be used to uninstall an application. In my own Installer scripts, I wrap most of the Installer functions in custom functions that support an uninstall flag. If flagged, the script generates an uninstall Installer script stored in ENVARC:Installer/. (Yeah, it uses RAM, but it's as good a place as any. Maybe Work:Installer/ would be a better default location.)

I also use a standard preamble for detecting and/or prompting for the installation language. Every string used in the installer script is localized in the preamble. It's big, but the original Installer doesn't exactly promote modular design.

So basically, I have a large template with everything prewritten. I just append the actual installation steps, options, flags, etc. to the template.

A nice InstallShield-style interface for generating standardized Installer scripts would be a boon to the community. A standardized method for obfuscating commercial Installer scripts would be nice as well.

In other words, your project is a much needed addition to the Amiga OS developer's toolkit. I would talk to Hyperion and the InstallerNG folks <http://ing.light-speed.de/> before getting started. They may already be working on something. If not, they may have some good pointers and suggestions for you.

And finally, :-), make it cross-platform. A lot of us are developing on Windows with cross-compilers. It's not exactly in the spirit, but it's about a bazillion times faster.

Trev

[ShawnBaxe]

Thanks for your support

I've decided to use StormGCC for development to make sure the code is as much portable as possible. I think it's a good choice. I'll code the GUI by hand, because ReActor doesn't work that well.

@Trev: Your template work with the v44-Installer? If it does, would you contribute it to my project? I think I could use it in whole or at least some parts of it to make the "InstallBuilder" ready for complex installations
You can send it to: kaya.dogan@web.de if you like.
You'll be in the credits then

[bloodline]

ShawnBaxe wrote:
An AROS port is possible. At this time I can't promise anything, but as far as I know, AROS' GUI system is similar to MUI, isn't it. I'll try to develop the code for file I/O in plain C (or maybe C++ cause classes are a nice way to implement such stuff), so it would be easy to port it. The only thing which would have to be rewritten would be the GUI part. As soon as the app is finished, I'll think about porting it. Btw. is the Installer available for AROS? Otherwise such a port wouldn't make sense.

The Commodore Standard installer? Yeah, we have a clone of that.

[Trev]

@ShawnBaxe

I can clean it up and send it your way. How is your code going to be licensed?

[ShawnBaxe]

@Trev

Thanks a lot The code will have a freeware license which allows the user to change/improve the code as long as all copyright information and credits are left intact and as long as I get notified if anyone wants to publish the software on Aminet. I don't want to have 10 completely different versions on Aminet. So the code will be published under the above terms. The binaries will be freeware, because I think that the Amiga needs good freeware. I don't want to make money of it. The Amiga-spirit is all that counts for me...

[Trev]

Sounds good. I'll be sure to include a compatible license with the Installer script (or maybe I'll just call it public domain--I need to go over the scripts dependencies and verify that I can do that).

Trev