Building installs

I thought I'd share some of what I've learned in building installs for Windows, Mac, Windows Mobile and iPhone.

Windows: Inno Setup

This is free from http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php

Inno Setup is a marvellous tool, making it really easy to auto-build "standard looking" setup .exe files using scripts. I use cygwin bash shell to grab my latest files, build the setup .exe files and zip them up - dead easy. Spread the word!


Mac: PackageBuilder - free from Apple

Some apps are simple enough just to distribute as zipped-up Disk Images, from which the user can drag the embedded .app file to their Applications folder. However, applications that are more complex (such as Noatikl, which includes various components including Audio Unit and VSTi variants) are tougher to build installs for.

PackageBuilder is built-in to XCode, and builds good looking "Mac Standard" installs, but it is a pain to drive it automatically. I use one bash shell script to copy all the bits I need under a build folder, then I run the PackageBuilder manually using pre-prepared configuration file (can't figure-out how to run it from the command line!) (making sure I save the .pkg files into the right folder... that'll catch you out if you're not careful!) and then a second script to build the pkg file into a .dmg file, then zip it up.

Both these tools allow you to embed licenses that the user has to agree to in order to complete the install, which was important to us; in both cases, those text files can come from .rtf files so they're nicely formated!

PackageBuilder with XCode 3

If you're using XCode 3.0, and have tried to build an installer package and encountered all sorts of annoying problems that prevent it from working; don't despair.

Instead, do what I did, and copy/use intead the PackageBuilder.app from from an XCode 2.x distribution; this works, and means you can totally avoid the buggy version in XCode 3.0 ... :)

This fixes the problem where when your application gets installed, it appears in /Library/Applications rather than ~/Applications ... this is such a huge bug, I'm amazed it actually got into XCode 3 ... oh well!

Here is an outline bash script that you could use. Note the use of sudo to get around some file permission problems; basically, if the files that you work with don't have the appropriate permissions, they won't get installed properly on the target Mac.

sudo /Developer/Tools/packagemaker \
-build \
-v \
-p myprod/install/macosx/myprod_mac.pkg \
-proj imyprod/liptikl/install/macosx/myprod_mac.pmproj \
-f ./myprod_install_root \
-r ./myprod_install_root \
-i myprod/install/macosx/Info.plist \
-d myprod/install/macosx/Description.plist

The .pmproj file is prepared by you, prior to repeated running of this script, by the PackageMaker GUI tool that is in /Developer/Applications/Utilities ...

Oh, and under myprod_install_root, you first have to create separate Applications, Library etc. folders containing copies of my App, Libraries etc. that you want installed, in a folder structure mirroring how they should get installed on the target Mac.

Windows Mobile

The solution here is to build cabinet files using cabwiz (which comes with of Visual Studio). You'll need to construct all sorts of custom code in a custom setup.dll file, that does stuff such as displaying license text that the user must agree to at install time. You should also write a relatively simple launcher .exe for Windows Desktop, that allows the user to install the file directly from their Windows desktop, through the services of ActiveSync (this is a lot easier for your users, than expecting them to copy a .cab file across to their Mobile device's StartUp menu...!)

iPhone

For distribution to your ad-hoc testers, remember that you need to update the version number in version.plist every time you supply an updated build; otherwise, it'll fail to install/update on the target iPhone/iPod! Remember also that if you zip-up a .app file, it won't install properly after being unzipped on the target computer. Instead, first put the .app file in a disk image, and then compress the disk image to a zip file that you can then mail to your ad-hoc testers.



File comparison and diff tools - Mac and Windows

File comparison tools are pretty critical to what I do. Most of the time, I rely on command-line diff (under Mac Terminal, or Windows Cygwin shell). But there are times when only a graphical comparison tool will do; such as recently, when I changed a vast amount of code, only to have introduced a new bug that was proving very difficult to track down. In these cases, you need to compare old and new code, one file (or folder) at a time, painstakingly looking at each change until you figure-out what went wrong.

A friend introduced me to Beyond Compare for Windows - which I liked enough to buy a license for. Great software!

However, now that I've changed my focus to do as much of my core development as possible on the Mac (avoiding Parallels where possible as it really is very slow compared to native Mac tools), I've been hunting around for a good graphical diff for Mac. And I have now found that tool - it is called Changes. Give it a try - tremendously good value, I'm very pleased to have bought a license!

Incidentally, I'm quite amazed at how much faster the shell on Mac works compared to Cygwin on Windows. I use a lot of scripting as part of my software development setup; one of the reasons to moving over to doing as much work as possible on the Mac is that the faster scripting makes a big difference to my productivity. I wonder why Cygwin is so much slower than the Mac Terminal window?

More on Android Audio

Many thanks to Jay, who was kind enough to post a comment on my previous post, saying that there is an API we can use for programmatic delivery of audio streams in Android, which you can find documented at http://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/AudioTrack.html.

Now that I know where to look :), I have found that there is also a similar API you can use to capture incoming audio on Android to memory, which is documented at http://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/AudioRecord.html.

So, that means that Intermorphic could at some point create a Noatikl/Partikl player library for Android if we wanted to, using the Android NDK (I wouldn't be surprised if this link breaks at some point...).

However, that would first require the NDK to fill-in some critical (!) gaps:
- no support for C++ exceptions (this is a show stopper for a lot of code...)
- no support for STL (this is also a show stopper...)

If any reader happens to know who to prod at Android, please get them on the case wrt the holes in their C++ support!

I suspect that the full Mixtikl user interface would be a bridge too far :) though it'd be interesting to experiment around what is possible (not that I ever have any spare time!).

Android Audio?

I've been investigating Android recenly, and have downloaded the SDK and had a play with it.

And in summary, I'm quite staggered at how poor the support is for audio in the Android SDK.

You can find-out more here.

The fundamental problem is that there is no way for a program to generate its own stream of audio. All audio resources must be from a URI of some sort, or from data bundled-in to the application, or from a file in the file system.

Of course, some bright spark out there might tell me that you can easily create your own "in-app" audio server with Java that you can access through a URI from that self-same application, and that can generate an audio stream on demand; I'd love to hear if this is the case!

On another note, the audio data capture system only allows you to send data to a file; there is no way for your application to get access to the audio as it arrives. So whichever way you look at it, there is no way to create audio FX boxes for Android.

This all reminds me very much of the JSR-135 multimedia APIs for Java, which were completely useless from the perspective of a low-level audio programmer.

I'm pleased to report however that if you want to create interesting audio apps for Mobile, then your needs are well served both by the iPhone/iPod SDK, and the Windows Mobile SDK. Shame about Android though!

More Mixtikl progress

Well, that always seems to happen. We've decided to put another round of polish on Mixtikl 1.5 for iPhone/iPod, and figure that we'll spend another 4 weeks or so on it, if our estimates are right...!

Holiday season is coming up too which is bound to affect things! :)