[Mono-dev] Application Deployment

[Francisco T. Martinez]

Carlos J. Muentes wrote:

>Yea I found how to edit the .mdp file while searching around the other
>day, and it did work.  I also found how to generate a tarball in
>monodevelop, but for some reason, it only worked as root, which isn't a
>big deal.  I think deployment project templates (in MD) and overall
>application development should be addressed further.  The world is
>getting comfy using RPM/deb/* type binary packages, and I think it
>would be a step back to limit apps written in C#/Mono to tarball
>deployment; especially in the 'Next->Next->Finish' world of Windows.  I
>also think that while xcopy simplifies a lot of things, it's not a great
>solution to deployment, especially in Windows systems.
>
>Personally, I would like to quickly generate installation packages that
>provide menu entries in the users respective desktop environments
>applications menu, as well as proper file location/layout.  I certainly
>would never expect end users of my software to compile my applications
>from source code; I think it's unprofessional and a bit lame, unless my
>app is targeted towards developers (like mono*), which in this case it
>isn't specifically in this instance.  IMHO, Rapid Application
>Development isn't only about a great runtime and a great lanaguage to
>accompany it; it's also about getting your software to your customers
>_rapidly_.
>
>I also kind of feel like there's way to big of a disconnect between mono
>and monodevelop (the mono runtime is almost feature complete, at version
>.11, MD is .89 hundreths away from a 1.0 release ^_^ ); there wouldn't
>be as many .NET apps in the world today without the awe inspiring
>muscle of Visual Studio.NET, but that's probably for another
>discussion.
>
>
>
>  
>
>>-------- Original Message --------
>>Subject: Re: [Mono-dev] Application Deployment
>>From: Mirco Bauer <meebey at meebey.net>
>>Date: Sun, August 13, 2006 6:19 pm
>>To: "Carlos J. Muentes" <carlos at rockwithme.org>
>>Cc: mono-devel-list at lists.ximian.com
>>
>>On Fri, 2006-08-11 at 11:45 -0700, Carlos J. Muentes wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Thanks for the great input Kornel, but I built this app using
>>>Monodevelop, and am not sure how to pass /target to MD during
>>>compilation.  Should I recompile the app in Windows?
>>>      
>>>
>>Open the monodevelop project file (something.mdp) with an texteditor and
>>change the target from Exe to WinExe and open it with monodevelop again
>>and compile. Now it will have no console window on windows.
>>
>>I asked already about this feature (allowing to set target to WinExe via
>>monodevelop it self) on the #monodevelop channel but nobody was
>>interested in it.
>>
>>Problem is, as soon as you change the build settings in monodevelop, it
>>will replace WinExe with -1 ;) so don't forgot to change/check that
>>value once in a while.
>>
>>-- 
>>Regards,
>>
>>Mirco 'meebey' Bauer
>>
>>PGP-Key:
>>http://keyserver.noreply.org/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xEEF946C8
>>
>>-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
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>>    
>>
Some time ago I released a small project that facilitates the creation 
of Windows Installers based on Inno Setup (which is a free download and 
very efficient Open Source product) for Mono developers that want to 
deploy their applications in Windows.

This project aims to create Windows Start Menu short cuts, desktop 
and/or tray launch short cuts and can even help begin a download for the 
respective runtime that the end user will need to run the Mono 
application. It has other features like correcting a Gtk# application 
that was not combiled with /target:winexe so that one can even avoid 
showing a Windows console window in the background of a running GUI app.

You can find more information about this and links to download the 
"InstallerMaker" utility here:

http://www.mfconsulting.com/blog/archives/000140.html

Hope it helps,

Paco