installer recommendation?

[Lou Lipnickey]

I am looking to package a java / swing / mysql application so that it
can be installed primarily on Window based systems. I googled for "java
mysql installer" and came up with a large number of products, gpl'd or
commercial; its hard to know where to start. In addition, I am not a
particular expert in mysql installation. Anyone have any suggestion as
to installers, where to start etc? thanks - Lou

[Petros Petrou]

Hi,

You can find a version of mysql in www.mysql.com that
needs only to be unzipped instead of doing a proper
installation. I suppose your installer could unzip the
file and then register the mysql service with windows.
If you need to execute a commnand line or any other application
from java user Runtime.getRunt ime.exec("you command here");

You command can be even another executable, a bat file or
any command line command you can imagine. I cant remember
how you register a service with windows using command line.

Hope that helps

Petros

Lou Lipnickey wrote:

I am looking to package a java / swing / mysql application so that it
can be installed primarily on Window based systems. I googled for "java
mysql installer" and came up with a large number of products, gpl'd or
commercial; its hard to know where to start. In addition, I am not a
particular expert in mysql installation. Anyone have any suggestion as
to installers, where to start etc? thanks - Lou

[Tom N]

Lou Lipnickey wrote:

I am looking to package a java / swing / mysql application so that it
can be installed primarily on Window based systems. I googled for "java mysql installer" and came up with a large number of products, gpl'd or
commercial; its hard to know where to start. In addition, I am not a
particular expert in mysql installation. Anyone have any suggestion as
to installers, where to start etc? thanks - Lou

I looked a couple of years ago at installers for a java/swing
application on Windows (but no mysql).

Inno Setup is an excellent (and free) installer for Windows, which we
used for in-house customers (the product was packaged for external
customers with InstallShield but the substantial number of in-house
customers used the Inno Setup version - just as good IMHO).
http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php

As to installing the JRE, you can't just get a Java app to run on any
old version of the JRE (in my experience, even a version later than the
one you've tested with your application may not work). Hence you can't
just rely on the user installing the correct JRE (although it depends on
the sophistication of your user base, and how much control you have over
their PC setup).

So you might want to check out what the JRE licensing says about
repacakaging it as part of your installation (e.g. installing the JRE
that you want in the same directory as your application, then packaging
them both together so they install as one). This would give you a JRE
just for your application, which affect any other applications or
browsers; neither would your application be affected if the user
installed another JRE.

It might be worth looking at how the Opera browser handles this (there
are distributions that include the JRE and those that don't).

Alternatively you could package the JRE installation .exe so it gets run
separately at the user's option from the installation of your
application. However, then you need to worry about which version of the
JRE is used to run your app, and possibly fiddle with PATHS etc.

Possibly mysql could be installed along with the app the same way as the
JRE, but you'd need to check whether it was possible or advisable to
install multiple copies of mysql on one PC.

[Tom N]

Tom N wrote:

As to installing the JRE, you can't just get a Java app to run on any
old version of the JRE (in my experience, even a version later than
the one you've tested with your application may not work). Hence you
can't just rely on the user installing the correct JRE (although it
depends on the sophistication of your user base, and how much control
you have over their PC setup).

So you might want to check out what the JRE licensing says about
repacakaging it as part of your installation (e.g. installing the JRE
that you want in the same directory as your application, then
packaging them both together so they install as one). This would give
you a JRE just for your application, which affect any other
applications or browsers; neither would your application be affected
if the user installed another JRE.

Typo: should say:

This would give you a JRE just for your application, which **won't** affect
any other applications or browsers; neither would your application be
affected if the user installed another JRE.

[Lou Lipnickey]

Great tips, thanks. I'm open to others.

Lou Lipnickey wrote:

I am looking to package a java / swing / mysql application so that it
can be installed primarily on Window based systems. I googled for "java
mysql installer" and came up with a large number of products, gpl'd or
commercial; its hard to know where to start. In addition, I am not a
particular expert in mysql installation. Anyone have any suggestion as
to installers, where to start etc? thanks - Lou

[IchBin]

Lou Lipnickey wrote:

Great tips, thanks. I'm open to others.

Lou Lipnickey wrote:

I am looking to package a java / swing / mysql application so that it
can be installed primarily on Window based systems. I googled for
"java mysql installer" and came up with a large number of products,
gpl'd or commercial; its hard to know where to start. In addition, I
am not a particular expert in mysql installation. Anyone have any
suggestion as to installers, where to start etc? thanks - Lou

I have found a real nice free one called at: *IzPack*
http://www.izforge.com/izpack/
*IzPack Overview*
IzPack is an installers generator for the Java platform. It produces
lightweight installers that can be run on any operating system where a
Java virtual machine is available. Depending on the operating system, it
can be launched by a double-click or a simple 'java -jar installer.jar'
on a shell. The most common use is to distribute applications for the
Java platform, but you can also use it for other kinds of projects. The
main benefit of IzPack is that it provides a clean and unique way of
distributing a project to users using different operating systems.
IzPack is reported to run on :

* Unix-like systems, mostly Linux and BSD
* MacOS X
* Windows variants

A big care has been put in making IzPack as small as possible in order
to reduce the weight of IzPack itself in the final installer archive.
Also, IzPack has been designed around modularity and flexibility. As a
consequence, you are able to specify how your installer should be by
selecting the panels that you want to show to the final user. Sometimes
there are even several panels for the same usage so that you can pick
the one that suits the best your needs. If ever you don't find your way
through the available panels, you can still develop your own ones with
the nice and easy IzPack API. There's even an embedded XML parser !

*Main features*

* XML-based installer descriptors
* Uses the maximum Jar archives compression level
* Jakarta Ant integration
* Great flexibility and modularity, it is very easy to extend IzPack
* No native code is required, but you can extend IzPack with native
code
* Shortcuts creation system
* Flexible and powerful user input panel
* Automatic uninstaller creation
* Easy localization with XML langpacks: 16 langpacks are provided
by default
* Variable substitution system
* OS-specific scripts interaction

Also one more:

*InstallAnywher e Enterprise Edition (v6.1)*-
http://www.zerog.com/downloads_01.shtml

Projects designed with trial versions of InstallAnywhere do not expire
and can be used with licensed versions. However, installers built with a
trial version of InstallAnywhere will time out after three days and must
be rebuilt at that time.
--
Thanks in Advance...
IchBin
_______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ ______________

'Laughter is inner jogging'
- Norman Cousins, editor and author (1915-1990)

[Tom N]

Lou Lipnickey wrote:

Great tips, thanks. I'm open to others.

Lou Lipnickey wrote:

I am looking to package a java / swing / mysql application so that it
can be installed primarily on Window based systems. I googled for "java
mysql installer" and came up with a large number of products, gpl'd or
commercial; its hard to know where to start. In addition, I am not a
particular expert in mysql installation. Anyone have any suggestion as
to installers, where to start etc? thanks - Lou

If you are interested in Java-based installers, you should look at Java Web
Start.
http://java.sun.com/products/javawebstart/