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I still remember the first time I used NAL snapshot to take a snapshot of what happened during the application install. At that time MSI packages didn't exist yet, snapshot was the magical thing that made application deployment easy. Snapshot was ahead of it's time but with the introduction of the Windows installer we have seen that MSI has become the industry standard for application deployment on Windows and specialized products got developed to do the application packaging.
Last Friday I've visited the “Packaging Event” in Amsterdam, an event about Application packaging and Windows installer technology. The packaging event was all about MSI and using the packaging tools available to create these. One of the most interesting sessions for me was the session from Tyler Robinson (Microsoft, Windows Installer Program Manager), Tyler did a session about the new features within Windows Installer 4.0, the version that will be in Vista. It was interesting to see what changes will be in version 4, if you also want to learn some about what will be changing, have a look at Tyler's team blog there is some interesting info and some links to a few web casts that discuss the new features of MSI. After Tyler there where sessions about Wise and Installshield (you know, we ship the ZENworks edition of Installshield with ZENworks), these sessions went into the new features of the products and discussed how to do packaging projects.
One thing I noticed at the event was the fact that there where quit a few companies that specialized on application packaging, some that offered packagers to do projects at the customer and some that offered outsourcing for application packaging. I know there are quit a few large companies that outsourced their packaging to a few companies in India, but according to the people I spoke with at the event, quit a few of these get back from the idea to move this to India and prefer to do business with local packaging specialists. I'm wondering if this is something that just happens within the Netherlands, do others see the same trend? Has your company outsourced application packaging or is all still done in-house? What are the tools used to create application packages?
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Its a small wonder tat this
Submitted by flyingGuy (not verified) on 6 November 2006 - 6:57pm.
Its a small wonder tat this is turning into a specialized field. Last time I checked I think they were approaching somewhere around 1000 different configuration options, just to install a program for crying out loud.
I write a lot of custom applications and thankfully I stay the heck away from the registry, I dont put things in the system or system32 directory. Whatever DLL's or Packages I write are ALWAYS relative to the install directory.
Windows is turning into pure insanity to try and build things for. With all the registry keys, layers upon layers of different API's, some via OLE, some via COM and now .Net its a wonder anything even moves at all. I like the *nix model, there are libs in once place and one place only, unless you want to keep them private to your own app. There is no registry to corrupt.
Perhaps some would label me as being a simplistic programmer, but some of the best programs are simple, they do what they do and nothing else.
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We have not outsourced our
Submitted by Marcus (not verified) on 8 November 2006 - 5:07am.
We have not outsourced our application packaging, we do it in-house with ZENworks snaphots, Wise for Windows Installer and AdminStudio ZENworks edition. We are aiming to use more MSI and less snapshots (to make it easier to migrate to next generaton of ZDM), but sometimes snaphots works best. GroupWise 7.01 client is a good example ;-)
Regards
Marcus
The Swedish Police
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So far we have not done any
Submitted by Eric Young (not verified) on 8 November 2006 - 11:38am.
So far we have not done any outsourcing for app packaging. One reason is $$$. The limited version of AdminStudio that comes with ZEN is indeed quite 'limited'. Also, we tend to stick with the default install packages a lot, because we have some app vendors that won't support their apps if their installers were modified in any way :(
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Packaging (or re-packaging)
Submitted by Grant Ballard (not verified) on 9 November 2006 - 10:18am.
Packaging (or re-packaging) is a beast to truly do right. I have spent hours upon hours at times trying to package an app into an MSI (using different techniques) only to eventually fall back to snapshot. I finally decided that I would make one attempt to make an MSI and then if it didn't work I'd go straight to a snapshot/AOT. I don't have time to futz around with getting an app packaged.
As far as outsourcing, on some apps that require activation that's the only way to go if you can afford it. Otherwise, use a combination of AutoIT w/ Fault Tolerance or Dependancies to get the app installed and to run it.
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We have outsourced
Submitted by Constantinos Amiridis (not verified) on 13 November 2006 - 2:35am.
We have outsourced application packaging, we order around 400 application packages and we got a person just works with coordinating applications order from our divisions towards our application packaging partner.
Our partner use Wise for Windows Installer
Best regards
Constantinos Amiridis
City of Stockholm
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We package all our own
Submitted by Rob (not verified) on 5 December 2006 - 8:52am.
We package all our own applications. Several hundred have been repackaged for an XP rollout with a new tree.
We couldn't manage without snapshot, though using MSI's works well you've no idea what its doing to your system.
We use alot of Oracle products and being able to snapshot their applications is a must.
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