I am trying to create an eclipse plug-in for an existing SDK. My main goal is to allow user to create a project that will automatically have the SDK jar file and will also load couple of examples. The main purpose is to free the user from the hassle of adding jar file and looking up the examples.
I am fairly new to this area of development. I have never created a plugin and was wondering if there are any specific tutorials or development guide for creating such a plugin.
Any help is appreciated!
It's a bit unclear what your requirements are, what the SDK are, what type of users you developing for. But the simplest solution would be to create a set of Eclipseprojects with a proper setup. Then your user would just import them and continue to build from them.
A more elaborate solution would be a new project wizard. So when the user goes to file -> new project, they will find a specific wizard this type of development. If this is what you are looking for, then this tutorial will offer a good starting point.
I am preparing to publish my software. I have created my own custom installer/uninstaller. I was wondering how I can have the uninstaller appear in "Programs and Features" under "Uninstall a program."
Thanks in advance
I guess the easiest tool to create a setup is Inno setup. The normal and recommended delivery method is using Windows Installer, but this technology is quite involved to deal with. If your tool is simple, perhaps just have a look at Inno setup and see if it gets the job done quickly for you. It's capable of installing and registering your application in add / remove programs.
Here is another thread: What to use for creating a quick and light setup file?
How can I create an automated Installer for a program that has a regular Installer with questions like:
Install Directory,
Accepting License,
Creating Icon on Desktop
etc...
Assuming that I am OK with building an Automated Installer for every program I want to separately, Or i want to put files in a Self Extracting Archive and run the Installer after unpacking.
Do I need a third party program for it? Should I use Command Prompt? Do I need to learn Lua? (I'm learning C#)
EDIT:
To clarify I'll use an example:
Let's say i wrote a program but that program has a requirement, like
DirectX, or Adobe Air, or Maxthon Browser.
I wrote my program in such a way that I have to be sure that that is
installed in a very specific Drive/Folder on the PC or with some
specific preferences/parameters.
I include an installer for this program, but I want to specify where
it gets installed on the PC and with what parameters.
Preferably Installing this requirement right after or during the
Installation/Extraction of my own program.
I'm looking for a way to be able to run the Installer of any given program and navigate through the install wizard of it with out the user having to/being able to change the settings I need (with the foreknowledge and permission of the user of course).
It doesn't need to be silent install or anything.
I have rewritten my answer.
Your mentioned setups requirements seem very common to me for the class of installation programs (setups) and not at all unusual.
Generally you have two options:
You write everything on your own, you create the install dialogs, the way the settings are saved, and so on. Then you are fine with C# (or any other language).
It is quite uncommon to do so, because it is time consuming, and you are reinventing things which have been solved in standard ways several times. Moreover you will fall in common setup error traps which are maybe already captured (or at minimum documented) if using tools.
If you want to use a tool, it is your first decision, if you want a tool based on MSI (Windows Installer) or not. MSI is the most powerful and most industrial-accepted setup technology in Windows, but it is a quite complicated matter, and no tool can shield this 100% from you. Google for WiX (Open Source) or InstallShield as starting points for MSI tools but there are of course more.
Some tools are already integrated or integrateable in Visual Studio for example.
Selfextracting tools are a starting point, but the following tools offer far more and are a good intermediate way between the extreme points SFX and MSI:
InnoSetup
(has also a home here on SO).
Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS) on SourceForge
One self extracting program in Windows I want to mention, because it is not widely known, that "IEXPRESS.exe" is already included in the OS.
Concerning your special question of navigating through the install wizard:
Every mentioned tool has ways to save install settings and of course is deciding which settings are changeable by the user part of the 1*1 of setup creation. With the tools you can design the install dialogs like you want consisting of the parts you want.
I hope I got your point.
P.S. While most tools have kind of a scripting language or something similar included, you are normally free to extend the installation process with your own actions written in nearly every programming language you like.
Following is the scenario.
I am developing an Open Source modules for an open source application. (for example : magento / wordpress / drupal)
Now, all this application provides inbuilt module installation interface.
Should It be a good solution, that I build a debiab package for each module that I develop and provide it separately for the installation ?
my reason behind such approach is to update number of instance at one go, while updating OS and during regular maintenance.
Is it a feasible solution ? or should I stick to classical structure.
Cheers,
Mike
As good developers we keep our code as standard compliant as possible to help in porting between platforms. But what tools are available that help us build the code in a uniform way across multiple platforms.
*nix family has make but Windows needs nmake.
I have read about SCons but never used it in anger. What is your favorite build tool, why do you find it effective and are there any limitations (i.e. platforms with bad support etc).
Cross platform IDEs as well.
cmake for c/c++ environments is good. http://www.cmake.org/
I personally use ant, rake, and maven2. I have used ant the most and find it great for several reasons:
Because it is java it works on lots of platforms (without changing any scripts)
The build files are written in XML and fairly easy to write
There are lots of 3rd party extensions available for it and it is easy to write plugins for
we do extreme cross development, and our code runs on linux, windows ce, windows 2K, nucleus and uCOS-II.
since each environment uses different 'make' methodology (out nucleus customer, for example, require us to compile via code-warrior GUI).
i used ANT combined with perl for about 2 years, but this lead the build script to total non-maintainability.
now we moved to use python, which increase the maintainability of the scripts.
bottom line, i did not find a ready-made tool, and had to build my own. maybe, when i have some time (2017 ?) i will pack my scripts and distribute them ....
If you're in the Java world, there are quite a few tools which are cross-platform. Apache Ant and Maven are both build tools which will run on any platform which has Java available for it.
Cruise Control (continuous integration tool) also works on Windows and Linux (it's written in Java as well).
I haven't had any real issues with the core tools, the only problems I've sometimes had have come from things external to the build process, i.e. publishing artifacts - this will vary between systems so I've found there's no single way of setting it up.
For C/C++ development, I've found that bakefile works well. The fairly large wxWidgets project, a cross-platform cross-platform utility and UI library, uses it for their build file generation.
Bakefile is cross-platform, cross-compiler native makefiles generator. It takes compiler-independent description of build tasks as input and generates native makefile (autoconf's Makefile.in, Visual C++ project, bcc makefile etc.).
Bakefile's task is to generate native makefiles, so that people can keep using their favorite tools. There are other cross-platform make solutions, but they either aren't native and require the user to use unfamiliar tools (Boost.Build) or they are too limited (qmake).
You can use gmake on Windows as well with cygwin/minGW or build your windows stuff on Linux.
http://cdtdoug.blogspot.com/2009/05/mingw-cross-for-linux.html
There are tools like Opus Make or MKS Toolkit that offers multiplatform and support. If you have an existing codebase of make script, could be easier migrate to one of there. I suspect you may hunt for similar tools in advertising of DDJ magazine.
We've been running a Java environment for Linux, Windows and the Mac for the last 18 months.
Maven 2 drives our builds, it's pretty easy to get things consistent here. Where M2 plugins don't dare to tread, we use small Ant scripts.
IDE-wise we're using Eclipse & IDEA - both, of course, multi-platform.
Testing - JUnit, Fitnesse, Fest - all nicely multi-platform.
Release scripts are written in Ruby. There's a bit more trouble with Windows here, but a function to convert paths as necessary generally does the trick.
TeamCity does CI. We've actually migrated this from Windows to Linux and encountered no errors at all, very nice package.
We did use GWT for a while and this did cause us large amounts of pain. Be careful if you swing that way.