Netbeans Application Installer Generator (updated)

Thursday Oct 25, 2007

One important and latest update : The plugin update center URL is updated to the latest one on www.openInstaller.org  site. The updated plugin is also available on the NetBeans 6.5/7.0 development update center but I am not able to get the URL of of that anywhere. So you can use the update center available from www.openInstaller.org  site which is here.

Thanks to one of my blog readers whom I met at Sun tech days Hyderabad yesterday who pointed this error. I happen to lost his name from my memory....

Since the announcement, there have been lot of requests for improvements for Netbeans Application Installer Generator plugin. Netbeans Community members as well as NetCAT members recognized this plugin. Many members want this plugin to support other Netbeans project types such as Java applications and web applications. I am currently working on to support creating installers for Java applications built from Netbeans. The user experience will be similar to the Netbeans module suite projects that exists today.

Today I updated the NBM with the issues reported by the community members. The following issues were addressed in this update:

1. On windows, the created installer, when launched from inside the Netbeans, uses the correct and existent JDK available on the system.
   
2. On Windows 2003, the plugin was not installing the product.

Thanks to all community members who reported the issues. Mainly, Wadi Jalil Maluf, Juergen and Peter Blemel.

The following are the upcoming tasks that I am working on now:

1. Support installer creation for Mac OS X.
2. Support for installer creation of Java application projects.
3. Uploading the sources to http://contrib.netbeans.org.
   

The update center URL is still the same : here. Try out this update and let me know what do you think..

One more update: The plugin is going to be part of the development Auto Update Center modules and will be available for download from the same update center inside NB 6.0. Here is the issue related to this request.

Like this post? | | | |

Posted at 03:41PM Oct 25, 2007 by Vadiraj Deshpande in NetBeans
Tags: application installer netbeans plugin

Announcing : Netbeans Application installer generator

Saturday Oct 20, 2007

Are you not satisfied with the zip bundle thats generated out of your module suite from Netbeans? Are you looking for an easy way of generating installers for suite projects right inside the Netbeans IDE? 

Well, here it is..a plugin based on openInstaller installer framework that does just this.  openInstaller is an extendable, cross-platform, multi-home install and customizable installer framework. All you have to do after installing the plugin is :

1. Configure your module suite to be 'standalone'. This is required to generate an installer. The plugin will assist you in this if you have not configured your module suite project yet.
   
2. Choose the Generate suite installer button on the toolbar (with CD icon). This will bring up the wizard.
3. Enter the basic details about your application (like, name, version, system requirements and license).
4. When you click Finish on the wizard, the plug-in will generate an installer and keeps it under 'dist' folder. There are three zip files in that folder : one module suite zip (generated by Netbeans, as before), <YOUR_APP_NAME>-binary.zip is the generated installer (you can rename this to any name you want and  <YOUR_APP_NAME>-source.zip which contains the source files for the installer. The latter can be used in upcoming openInstaller IDE to customize the generated installer.
5. Distribute <YOUR_APP_NAME>-binary.zip bundle and unzip on the target machine and execute the launcher script specific to your platform (There's one for all *NIX and one for windows).

Download the plugin from this update center. (you need to manually configure this update center in your Netbeans IDE. If you do not know how to do this, go here. Look into the first part and use this update center link.

More information (in the form of FAQ) about the plugin is here.

You really have to see this flash demo which shows how easy is to generate an installer for your module suite application. 

Disclaimer: The module described here are purely experimental (alpha version), so no guaranties. Use at your own risk.

Below are the screenshots of the plug-in actions..

The screenshots show the process of generating installers for the FeedReader suite sample that comes with Netbeans IDE

Acknowledgments :

 A lot of people helped me and involved directly and indirectly on this work,. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them :

Christian my director, who supported this work, Matthew Williamson who encouraged me on this, my earlier manager Gowri Sivaprasad, my colleagues who worked with me on this : Mahesh and Nandagopal, the core framework team (Jayanth, Sandeep, Rajkumar, Karthickraj, Gustav) the core framework architect James Falkner, the lead Manpreet Singh, Radhika who carefully reviewed design documents and last but not the least, Geertjan, who was involved in this since its inception, the idea, the design, the help guide.. (ahh.. he made it every sentence sound right in that) and lot of help and guidance..

Thanks to you all.

Like this post? | | | |

Posted at 12:30AM Oct 20, 2007 by Vadiraj Deshpande in NetBeans
Tags: application generator installer module netbeans openinstaller platform suite