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I am working on a program that will be distributed on a USB stick (thumbdrive, flashdrive, whatever they're called these days). It's a critical application and must be up and running within 2 minutes of putting the drive in the machine. Unfortunately, the 2 minute requirement didn't get to me until late (yeah, I know.... but let's talk about the programming, not the project management  ).
I timed the installation of .NET 2.0 in a virtual machine today and it took about 8-10 minutes for it to install. My client's not gonna go for that. So I'm wondering if I can just copy all the DLLs that are referenced in my program to the ouput location and distribute those with the application?
If not, is there some way I can build a .NET installer that installs only the stuff I've actually used? I was watching the .NET installation and there's a lot of stuff in there that I just don't use in my program.
Any hints you can give would be greatly appreciated.
Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan
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Can't be done at an affordable price.
Tell your customer for fast launch Vista/Win7 is required, it comes with .NET preinstalled.
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]
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I don't think it can be done. Even if you copy all the registry settings and files and manage to register it all in a new machine in a small time, you still risk having something which won't work properly, and the cost of keeping this "custom installer" updated would be big.
The best way to get that result is not using .NET (or any similar framework), so you can build a standalone executable and have it up and running in seconds.
However, since I guess your app is already developed and it would be too expensive to re-build it from scratch, the other options might be using a virtual machine. You can set up a virtual machine with the operating system, .NET and your app installed and configured. But still you would have to install vmware - unless you demand it to be installed on all machines before you setup your app.
But in this case, you can simply demand that .NET is installed prior to using your app, it shouldn't be too much of a problem. I think this is the best way to solve your problem without dropping .NET.
Good luck.
2+2=5 for very large amounts of 2
(always loved that one hehe!)
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Thanks both of you... unfortunately the problem isn't American computers. I'm guessing most of them will probably already have the framework installed. But if someone's in another country and needs to use this I don't know how prevalent .net is elsewhere.
Yeah, now that I'm thinking about it I probably shoudl have used something else. But I'm not even sure I'd know where to begin. This is the only hammer I have right now so everything does look like a nail. For my future learning, what other language would you use for this type of thing?
Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan
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C++ sure does the trick.
Delphi is probably the best choice for stepping down from .NET since it offers a great visual designer and a fat library of objects and functions, but now its future is not that sure anymore, so I don't know if I would bet on it for a project you'll have to maintain in the next few years.
As for how prevalent .NET is in other countries, I can only speak for Italy, and it's definitely prevalent here.
2+2=5 for very large amounts of 2
(always loved that one hehe!)
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IMO if one can get hold of a recent Windows PC, one can install .NET, no matter where.
And I would not consider for a moment developing for Windows without .NET; Microsoft has taken a long time to come up with a decent framework, I am not going to ignore it for the cause of some fraction of the market not having it installed yet.
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]
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I understand what you're saying and for the most part I'd agree with you. I can't really imagine how difficult it must have been to come up with some of these things pre-.NET. The problem here is that the 10-15 minutes it takes to install .NET 2.0 is just too long. I can't really say why because of an NDA but it really does have to be as fast as it possibly can.
Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan
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The NDA raises the threshold for affordability which I mentioned in my first reply.
Now have a look at Xenocode as Pete suggested, it has been mentioned often in these forums, although I don't recall anyone actually using it.
Don't forget to buy a huge USB stick.
FWIW: the specs being late, was the NDA in time?
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]
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Sorry I missed this the first time. LOL re the specs and the NDA and the timing.
Yeah, I sure wish I'd known this to start with. But I guess you learn what questions to ask as you go.
I'll give xenocode a look-see. Thanks!
Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan
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Don't hesitate to post on any progress, Xenocode, U3 or otherwise.
Good luck.
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]
The quality and detail of your question reflects on the effectiveness of the help you are likely to get.
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You might want to look into an option where the framework elements you need are compiled into your application. These are generally fairly expensive though, but they might be just what you want. Take a look at things like Thinstall[^] or Xenocode[^].
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Just wanted to come back and thank everyone for the help. I believe we're going to be going with a Xenocode solution. I'm trying to compare their Virtual Application Suite and their PostBuild products right now but I have a feeling I'll be going with VAS. It has the snapshotting capability (take a snapshot of your system before and after and the delta is what needs to be virtualized). But the obfuscation of PostBuild is tempting.
Anyway.... thanks to everyone for all the help and pointing me in the right direction!
Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan
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I generally agree with what other people have being saying here. I doubt this is actually achievable with .net, and the best thing is to somehow get it agreed that .net is already on the PC. Second to that would be to use one of the various app virtualisation packages, but they don't come cheap.
One thing that might be worth trying though is the .net client profile[^]. It's a cut down version of the framework that only includes the basics and the winforms/wpf/client stuff and not any of the asp.net/web stuff. I've never used it so I can't comment on it's install speed, but it's cut down so it may be faster.
Simon
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I realize that I am late to the party, but.
Is this a run-only-once app?
If not, then the Framework Install only happens once. Thereafter loading times would be normal.
Henry Minute
Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain
Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?"
“I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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Well, it's a record keeping app so the owner would probably run it several times but it might be used only one time in an emergency location and that's when it has to run fast and that's also when the host machine probably isn't going to allow anything else to be installed. I know I'm being vague but I have to be careful with the NDA I signed.
It looks like VMWare's Thinstall does exactly what we need it to but the price is sooooo high. Anyone know of something out there that does the same thing but for less money? I know... but a girl can dream, can't she?
Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan
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I don't know if this is possible, but what about the U3 enabled USB Sticks. Programs can be run directly from them. Is there one with sufficient capacity to hold your app and an installation of the framework?
Henry Minute
Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain
Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?"
“I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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What's a U3 enabled USB stick? At this point I'm in the mood to try just about anything.
Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan
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It is a type of USB Stick that can run applications.
Take a look at this[^].
There is also a Wikipedia entry, which might help.
Henry Minute
Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain
Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?"
“I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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I'm working with a .NET System.Windows.Forms.TreeView (both .NET 2.0 and 3.5) and have a problem with the check boxes not correctly affecting/reflecting the TreeNode's Checked state.
I've enabled checkboxes and have event handlers for BeforeCheck and AfterCheck to act whenever a TreeNode's checkbox is checked or unchecked. My problem is that if you place the mouse pointer directly on a node's checkbox and double-click, the checkbox's visible checked state toggles, but the Checked state of the corresponding TreeNode does not actually change. Further the TreeView's BeforeCheck and AfterCheck handlers are never invoked [this actually seems consistent and follows from the observation the these events are raised exactly and only when anything actually changes the TreeNode.Checked property, not the state of the visible check box]. A single(left)-click on the check box works properly: the Before/AfterCheck handlers are invoked and the TreeNode's Checked state changes correctly.
Double-clicking elsewhere on the displayed node toggles the expanded/collapsed state (as I assume it's suposed to do).
I've tried to find a TreeView event handler that will allow me to catch a double-click directly on the checkbox and either ignore it or modify the node's checked state myself. But I've been unable to find an event handle to catch this.
Is this a known bug? Could there be something I'm doing wrong? It gives my application a rather annoying incorrect behavior and I really don't want to abandon the use of TreeView and have to reimplement a correct "TreeView"!
Can anyone steer me toward any information about this behavior of TreeView?
Thanks in advance.
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If this is the wrong category for my problem, please direct me to the correct place to post my question.
Recently, I have been unable to build any of my C++ projects in Visual Studio .NET 2003 The error is always of the form:
fatal error C1083: Cannot open source file: '.\hello.cpp': No such file or directory
I received the same error when I created a brand new c++ project (empty project, Win32 Console) of Hello World!
#include "stdafx.h"
#include "iostream.h"
using namespace std;
void main()
{
cout << "Hello World!";
}
I have found the following information: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/et4zwx34%28VS.80%29.aspx but I don't know how to check and correct all the possibilities
- My include environment variable is set to "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\SDK\v1.1\include"
- It does not make a difference to use the syntax: #include <stdafx.h>
I was previously able to write and compile programs without a problem, is there a setting that has been changed somehow?
Appreciate any ideas/suggestions; thanks for your time.
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You'r looking for the Visual C++ forum. This has nothing to do with the .NET Framework.
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Hello All,
I want to be able to distribute an excel workbook to customers, but don't want people to have access to the excel workbook's macros and two of it's sheets. We don't trust the password protection provided by excel (you can buy one of many applications on the web that claim to be able to crack it).
What I think we need is to encapsulate the excel file into a .Net application that provides a basic excel viewer (i.e. the application comprises of a title bar and the excel sheet). Our customer will be able to enter data onto the sheet and click a button that calls the macros (that update the sheet).
Is this solution possible? Can anyone think of a better solution?
Unfortunately moving the functionality out of an excel workbook completely is not an option.
Thank you for your help!
Don
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Member 3199304 wrote: Can anyone think of a better solution?
Yes I can.
Member 3199304 wrote: Unfortunately moving the functionality out of an excel workbook completely is not an option.
Well that rules out a better solution then doesn't it.
So to sum up, you must use Excel but you don't want the user to use Excel. Hmmm who came up with this plan?
Anyway I suppose you are left with discovering whatever features they put in Excel that might allow you to fit that square peg in your round hole.
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My God! What helpful answer - thank you, your the best! (I though I'd join in on your sarcasm
Anyway, unfortunately I'm stuck with the said problem; I need to provide a mechanism to prevent access to the excel file. I was hoping .Net had some sort of GUI component for interacting with Excel files. I have tried searching the web, but haven't had any luck.
For those who have some constructive suggestions, I would be grateful for your help.
Cheers,
Don
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