RE: Why not use VA/RPG -- MIDRANGE-L

Booth,

I do not know anything about what VARPG does for installs.  However, I do
know about installs in the PC world.  Check out Install Shield Express
(http://www.installshield.com/express/ ).  It is very easy to use, no
"coding" involved, just fill out some forms and you have a "standard"
install shield install (which most commercial packages use these days) and
even an un-install.  And it will generate the autorun for cd based installs.

For pure disk based or email based installs, we use a combination of a
WinZip generated self extracting zip file & Install Shield.  With the WinZip
self extractor, you can tell it to automatically unzip when executed and run
a program (setup.exe).  Works pretty good.

If you download our Fax Server/401 demo at www.faxserver401.com/download.htm
, you can see an example of how this all works.

Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com [mailto:owner-midrange-l@midrange.com]On
Behalf Of boothm@earth.Goddard.edu
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2000 5:59 PM
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
Subject: Re: Why not use VA/RPG

I burned a CD with the version as I wanted it installed and circulated the
CD.  It had autorun and all, but my experience is mid-range, not PC so it
was hard for me.  It worked but now I want to experiment with an install
on the LAN.  I think that'll work but of course those working off the net
or off dial-up can't use that choice.  Silent install is supposed to work
but I never could get it to actually work correctly.  My feeling is that
VARPG is good for RPG programmers wanting to produce some snazzy stuff.
But they have to know the PC world or have friends there in order to get
the packages properly installed.
_______________________
Booth Martin
boothm@earth.goddard.edu
http://www.spy.net/~booth
_______________________




"Scott P. Johnson" <sjohnson@highsmith.com>
Sent by: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com
01/18/2000 08:29 AM
Please respond to MIDRANGE-L


        To:     MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
        cc:
        Subject:        Re: Why not use VA/RPG


This is the way I am doing updates:

You have the normal Install dirs for first time installs.
Like normal software these can lag a 'point version' or so.
So in other words they do not get updated all the time.
Separately you have Update dirs.  These are where the real
updates come from.  Basically you make your changes in VARPG,
test, and then copy what is in the RT_Win32 dir to the Update
dir.  The update is now available to the general public.

Then there is the question of how to get the update to the
user.  If you have done LAN installs, you can just copy the
updated files into the LAN dirs of the app.  I do this on
the big app we have.  On a smaller locally installed app,
I am using a simple batch file that is manually kicked off.
It checks time stamps on the files and only copies what has
been updated.

I am in the process of trying to figure out a way to automate
this whole procedure.  I have a couple of ideas, but nothing
sound yet.

As a side note, when a new version of VARPG comes out, I
usually spend some time doing re-installs to get the latest
version of the VARPG runtime.  I think this is something that
cannot really be gotten around.
--
------------------------------------------------------
Scott P. Johnson
Microcomputer Development Specialist
IBM Certified Specialist - AS/400 RPG Programmer
Highsmith Inc.
W5527 Hwy 106, PO BOX 800
Fort Atkinson, WI 53538-0800
TEL:  920-563-9571                FAX:  920-563-7395
sjohnson@highsmith.com
www.highsmith.com
------------------------------------------------------
> Not sure I really understand. Why wouldn't you just put some kind of
> current version checker in the program (load current version in a
> dataarea on the AS/400 and check against a constant in the program).
>
>  You know, I bet that would work.  A good idea.  Scott Johnson did
> something like that I think. I tried it but couldn't figure out how to
> upgrade to the next version all at once everywhere, on every PC.
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