Sunday, 5th February 2006

Universal Installer

Don't you just love it when you end up making work for yourself, right when you think you're overworked enough as it is?

Well, such a scenario just happened to me whilst getting ROTunes v0.08 ready for release. It suddenly occurred to me that I've made so many changes and improvements to the code, it's probably easier for anyone upgrading just to delete their existing copy and install the new version afresh! Of course, that's 'just not cricket', apart from being against the whole RISC OS philosophy of being flexible enough to cater for all levels of user as well as being considerate to the end-users preferences and time.

Therefore, there was no solution other than to write an installer application for the new ROTunes update. This would ensure that new users would end up with a nice new install but also allow existing users to upgrade without having to reset or lose all their choices and preferences etc.

This brought me to thinking that I've actually been striving to come up with a nice and simple way of supplying upgrades to my software for a couple of years now. I've half-written (or bodged) installers in the past, even attempting to write a kind of multi-purpose installer, but everytime I end up with something that's only really suitable for the task in hand and not ideal for re-using the next time I release another upgrade to something!

So..... this morning I decided that I was going to crack it once and for all, and write a completely generic, easy-to-use, universal installer application for any software I may decide to upgrade in the future. As Apple always seems to have well thought out installers and user interfaces, I thought I'd write something along similar lines - but of course make it smaller, leaner and better!

Thus, the completion of Paul's Universal Application Installer about 30 minutes ago (not bad going if I do say so myself - a new application from concept, design, planning and coding right through to finished, debugged release-ready version in under a day!)

I just need to finish bug testing ROTunes v0.08 and I can unleash both update and installer on the world!

Your Name
Your Email Address	(optional, will be encoded to avoid spambots)
Your web page	(optional and takes precedence over email address)
Add your comment	(include URLs inside square brackets, eg. [www.bbc.co.uk]
Anti-Spam Verification code	Please re-enter the characters you see above:
Moderation	Off - Your comments will be published immediately.
Remember name and email/web page for next time  (requires 'cookies')