We have window application developed in .Net and want perfect deployment technology
which enables easy application installation and upgrading.
The client can be accessed from anywhere in the world where an Internet connection is available.
In future we want the same deployment technology for provide support user's who use Window 7 and
Window 8
Looking at the the initial requirement we have decided to use Click Once technology
but found many issues in the deployment. They are below
You will need to sign a Click Once application with trusted certificate
otherwise it is blocked and instantly removed by Antivirus program.
ClickOnce may not be supported by all browsers , the behavior are different in IE and
other browser
ClickOnce to doesn't install components into the GAC , doesn't installed in the program
files rather it install and maintain user wise in the client machine.
ClickOnce has issue with proxy network and unable to customize the setup screen.
Community has faced many issues with ClickOnce Setup and does not have enough solution or
updates on Click Once technology solution
Do we have perfect deployment solution for window app over internet other than ClickOnce? Which methodology is widely used for window app deployment over internet?
Which deployment technology provide better success rate for easily maintenance and version update for the Window app over internet ?
You could build it as a standard executable and create an installer. A good way to make an installer is InnoSetup. However, the user has to have .Net Framework already installed.
As of Windows Vista, version 2.0 is included, Windows 7 includes 3.5, and Windows 8 includes 4.5. If you change the target .Net Framework of your application you can target these systems. Go to Properties > Target Framework > Choose 2.0, 3.5, or 4.5 (client profile if available).
As for updates, you should implement this in your application on your own or get another third-party updater. I don't know any good ones though.
Related
I've started working with delphi quite some while ago but I would say I'm still a newbie in all this.
So basically I tried creating REST Server, which can validate license keys. I got in working with Indy, but one thing bothers me. The GUI. The Server shouldn't have any kind of gui so it can work on any OS (Win, Linux, etc). Is there a way to make a REST Server without any GUI/FMX/VCL?
BTW: Working in Delphi 10.2.3 Professional.
Any advice is appreciated.
EDIT: I forgot to mention one thing: the server is supposed to run on an independent Data Center away from any user.
You can create the WebServer as a Windows Service.
You can use DelphiMVCFramework or any other Framework to create it.
With DMVC you can create console application, Windows Service, Linux daemon, Apache module (Windows and Linux) and IIS ISAPI (Windows).
With Intraweb you can also create Services.
Take a look at our mORMot Open Source REST framework, which works on Delphi but also on FPC/Lazarus.
FPC support ensures that you can target Linux with this free compiler. No need to upgrade to a newer version of Delphi Architect, which supports Linux, and is very pricey - and less stable (to my knowledge) since Linux support is quite new.
As you requested, the mORMot REST server has no UI part. You define your services as interface and class - like you do e.g. with DotNet - and you will have full JSON/REST support generated.
mORMot is used on production since years for very high performance and stability, hosted on both Windows and Linux. A version 2 is on its way, which would be even easier to use for new projects.
And you can create a Windows service or Linux daemon without using any third party framework. Delphi include everything you need. However, it is possible that third party framework will facilitate your programming. Don't forget you'll have to learn those third party framework.
Creating a Linux daemon service in Delphi
Creating a Windows Service in Delphi
In both cases, you can use the sample code you've found that make use of TIdTCPServer.
We have a system which has Windows 8.1 store app and iPad solutions as frontends and a MVC web as the backend.
We have lot of clients and they prefer hosting the web on premise due to sensitivity of the data. (So no cloud hosting)
Each client runs on different versions of the backend and for those we provide according frontend version as well.
Eg: 3.15.5 backend we have 3.15.5 frontend iPad app. (Backend provides a download link to iPad app, it will automatically update the existing app in the iPad)
(We can't make the frontend apps backward compatible due to high maintenance)
But for our Windows 8.1 app also we have relevant versions but we don't know how to deploy it simply.
We can't ask the customer to run powershell scripts either.
We can't use the Windows store because every time we publish the latest version of the app all our backends need to upgrade as well. Which is not possible due to large no of clients we have.
So my question is how do I provide a simple download solution for Windows 8.1 app that can be operate by a non IT personal?
I am developing an application which has customer specific configuration (2 text and 2 binary files). The use case supposes that customer downloads an installation package (I am going to use install4j) and install it on target platform (Mac or Windows). So all installation packages should be different for different customers.
I am considering 2 possible scenarios for implementation:
Generate new installation package per customer request on server side (cons: I need to have install4j for Linux, which is server platform)
Have a half-generated installation package and inject customer data somehow to the package by customer request (cons: I am not sure this is quite possible at all)
I never used install4j before and don't know how to implement 1 or 2. Their documentation is far from ideal. They doesn't have examples or consider cases like this, so any suggestion is very appreciated.
You cannot modify an installer after it has been built. The main reason is that it would break code signing. So you would need to generate a new installer for each configuration. If you deploy on Mac OS X and Windows, you need install4j Multi-Platform Edition which also works on Linux.
Alternatively, you could ask the user to provide credentials in the installer, then you could download the appropriate files on demand with "Download file" actions.
I work in a service organization where users of our internal tools are often disconnected. It is often the case that service engineers on service assignments are "stranded" with an outdated version of some internal tool.
These tools are deployed using ClickOnce publish VS2010 .NET4 . If the users run all their apps while still connected to corporate network, they would get a notification that a new version was available. As the number of various tools increase, the chance increases that some app is not updated.
Is it possible to automate this process, by a batch file or something?
So that the engineers just need to run one file when connected to corporate nw to get all the newest versions of their installed tools?
Added:
An easier way of saying it would be to have "something like Windows update" operating on corporate net, but for internal ClickOnce apps.
Very interesting question. I can't think of a quick way to do this, but it's definitely possible.
I would create another ClickOnce app whose job is to update the other ClickOnce apps. This app needs the url of each app's .application file. If all engineers are supposed to have all apps, that's easy. If not, maybe you could look through their start menu and find all the ClickOnce Application Reference files. Those files contain the url.
Next, just launch the url and pass a query string argument...
http://server/MyApp/MyApp.application?UpdateOnly=true
In the startup of your applications, you can check the query string argument and shut down the app if it's run with UpdateOnly=true.
One side note. If you set the minimum required version of each of your apps to the latest version, users won't get prompted with the new version dialog. Seems like you'd want to do that or the user would still have to pay attention and do a lot of clicking.
I have a smart client app (WinForms/WPF) currently deployed using ClickOnce.
A particular client has expressed the desire to silently deploy the app to it's intranet network users as part of its nightly/weekly client PC update service - presumably via MS Systems Management Server (SMS) and Group Policy or similar (I don't understand the exact mechanisms). As such, they've requested a .MSI installer instead.
So a few questions for confirmation (along with my thoughts on answer - am more than happy to be wrong!):
Can a ClickOnce app be silently installed en-mass by admin???
My thoughts: No, because ClickOnce is a per-user installation this would be difficult unless the user is actually logged in at time of remote installation.
Is there a tool to convert a ClickOnce app/project's settings to a simple MSI installer project (e.g. Visual Studio Deployment Project)???
My thoughts: Not in the box, but would love a tool to repeatedly copy/use settings from the ClickOnce config to the deployment project - e.g. ProductName, Version, File Associations etc. This way we only maintain one set of deployment settings.
Any other alternatives for this scenario to get 'er done quick...?
I don't think you can install a ClickOnce application silently, certainly not with SMS. And I don't know of any tool that does that, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. ;-)
The idea of deploying a shortcut is an interesting thought. Have you ever noticed that if you leave a shortcut on the desktop even after the application is uninstalled, if the user clicks on it, it reinstalls the application?