Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Self-Installing Apps

I have recently explored the idea of self-installing apps while implementing the new Glimmer executable.

What do I mean by a self-installing app?

An application that requires external dependencies, potentially written in multiple languages/technologies, and can handle self-installing them upon first-run via a simple seed command.

Think of it like a seed of a bean plant, which you'd plant (download), water (execute), and then voila, a full-grown app sprouts up, grabbing extra components off the Internet as needed.

To translate this into my example above, Glimmer, has a non-ruby dependency, SWT.jar (Java Archive), which must be setup properly for Glimmer to work. As a self-installing app however, it detects whether SWT.jar is available or not on the first run, and automatically downloads and installs it if unavailable, or otherwise uses it and runs without a hitch. That works on Mac, Windows, and Linux with both x86 and x86-64 CPU architectures.







Self-installing apps are nothing new, but I am documenting my first venture into it in JRuby (albeit I've collaborated with a developer in the past who wrote such an installer for an application I built at a past company I worked for)

I shall explore the idea of having self-installing apps auto-update themselves as well in the future. Stay tuned for a blog post about the subject if I do implement.

Would it be a good idea if all software was self-installing and self-aware? Please share your thoughts in comments.

You may try Glimmer over here.

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