Java Glossary : InstallAnywhere

Java definitions: 0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

You are here : home : Java Glossary : I words : InstallAnywhere.

A program that lets you produce executables for installing Java apps for a variety of platforms. It claims to produce much smaller distributables that install faster than the Install Shield competition. Further it will also handle installing a suitable Java VM.

The following information comes from my experience with he product in 2001. Hopefully it has improved since then. I'd be interested in hearing how.

The are three versions. The simplest, InstallAnywhere-Now is free. It is a snap to use. It creates a *.exe for windows and a *.bin script for Unix (processor independent! clever eh?), and a Mac version too if your program can run under the Mac's ancient Java. The installer adds the program to the menu with an icon. The problems with the free version include:

If you ask it to install the JVM, it makes a private copy. Every app gets its own copy of the JVM. You soon fill up your client's disks with duplicate copies of the JVM.
If the end user has several JVMs installed it asks the user which to use. Most end users have no clue what to answer. You can't configure the JVM required at build time.
It will add the app to the menu, but not to the desktop.
It does not work at all under Windows 98! I have not tested the latest version to see if this bug has been fixed. The previous version could not find installed JVMs. Even when the end user manually finds java.exe for it, it only copies some of the necessary files to the install directory. It works fine under NT, however. Their email robot expressed no interest in hearing about the bug. They wanted me to pay them $70.00 USD for doing them a favour of reporting the bug.
You can't specify whether included data files should override the user's existing files or not. They always replace.
The new version 3.5 has more customisation powers, but it is flaky. It did many strange things and then gradually stopped doing them, without rhyme nor reason.
Even without JVM you add about 1 MB to your executable download size and roughly the same amount to the installed executable. Ideally this overhead should be downloaded once, not once per app.

The full version reputedly installs JVMs, but after that bad experience I would not trust them to produce a working product. I used InstallAnywhere-Now to deploy my Esperanto Tradukilo Vortope. I put up with InstallAnywhere-Now because it is free. The competition is even worse, and quite expensive.

I have had exchanged many emails and phone calls with the InstallAnywhere people. I hope they follow my advice and make InstallAnywhereNow more foolproof for the end user, but limit it to tiny apps.

Unfortunately Version 4 still gives you no way to control which VM your app gets connected to. Its downloads are about 200k bigger than version 3.5, a little over a megabyte of overhead on each download, exclusive of the VM. The main new feature of version 4 is the ability to include a jar file that is automatically expanded as part of the install. InstallAnywhereNow does not have a way of pre-installing the generic installer once, the way you can with Web Start which would remove that overhead. The advantage is the downloads are totally self-contained.

Version 5 is now out which has the power update feature similar to JNLP for automatically installing upgrades to your customers. The major enhancement in the use of XML files to control the installer.

installation

home	Canadian Mind Products
	mindprod.com IP:[24.87.56.253]
	Your IP:[80.134.30.163]
	You are visitor number 1798.
	Please send errors, omissions and suggestions
	to improve this page to Roedy Green.
	You can get a fresh copy of this page from:	or possibly from your local J: drive mirror:
	http://mindprod.com/jgloss/installanywhere.html	J:\mindprod\jgloss\installanywhere.html