installer question
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Hi, I've been coding visual c++ for a while now, and made a couple of nice little MFC applications. However I have a kind of general question about the next stage. I can get the applications to work from visual C++ but obviously that's not ideal for distribution, so my question is (sorry if this is stupid) 1. What exactly is the purpose of an installer i.e. install shield etc, as when I build my app in c++ i just get an exe file, no changes in registry or other files?(don't think my question is well worded :|) 2. Where do i get one/ how do i implement it. Thanks Andy ps another question if i want to read a particular file format into my application say *.jpg for example, how can i do this, surely I don't have to write the code from scratch or do I have to buy a proprietary library?
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Hi, I've been coding visual c++ for a while now, and made a couple of nice little MFC applications. However I have a kind of general question about the next stage. I can get the applications to work from visual C++ but obviously that's not ideal for distribution, so my question is (sorry if this is stupid) 1. What exactly is the purpose of an installer i.e. install shield etc, as when I build my app in c++ i just get an exe file, no changes in registry or other files?(don't think my question is well worded :|) 2. Where do i get one/ how do i implement it. Thanks Andy ps another question if i want to read a particular file format into my application say *.jpg for example, how can i do this, surely I don't have to write the code from scratch or do I have to buy a proprietary library?
1. Your program usually has a number of dependencies, which most commonly are DLLs implicitly used by your program at run-time. An installer makes sure that the target machine already has these DLLs and install the missing ones (an installer can do quite some things more, but this is its main functionality.) Most DLLs are system DLLs and you won't have to worry about them. Make this little test: copy your executable to a fresh machine (OS just installed) and see what happens. The system will guide you about what DLLs are missing. One important case is MFC distribution DLLs: usually, it is preferrable to build your app as statically linked against MFC (see project settings, first tab) so that you don't depend on MFC DLLs at all. 2. Most known commercial installers are InstallShield and Wise (google for them.) Windows has its on installation technology called Windows Installer, but it requires some preloaded services in the target machine which are not natively supported by older OSs. Pablo van der Meer has written a Little Install Builder[^] which may suit your needs. Joaquín M López Muñoz Telefónica, Investigación y Desarrollo
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Hi, I've been coding visual c++ for a while now, and made a couple of nice little MFC applications. However I have a kind of general question about the next stage. I can get the applications to work from visual C++ but obviously that's not ideal for distribution, so my question is (sorry if this is stupid) 1. What exactly is the purpose of an installer i.e. install shield etc, as when I build my app in c++ i just get an exe file, no changes in registry or other files?(don't think my question is well worded :|) 2. Where do i get one/ how do i implement it. Thanks Andy ps another question if i want to read a particular file format into my application say *.jpg for example, how can i do this, surely I don't have to write the code from scratch or do I have to buy a proprietary library?
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Hi, I've been coding visual c++ for a while now, and made a couple of nice little MFC applications. However I have a kind of general question about the next stage. I can get the applications to work from visual C++ but obviously that's not ideal for distribution, so my question is (sorry if this is stupid) 1. What exactly is the purpose of an installer i.e. install shield etc, as when I build my app in c++ i just get an exe file, no changes in registry or other files?(don't think my question is well worded :|) 2. Where do i get one/ how do i implement it. Thanks Andy ps another question if i want to read a particular file format into my application say *.jpg for example, how can i do this, surely I don't have to write the code from scratch or do I have to buy a proprietary library?
i want to read a particular file format into my application say *.jpg for example, how can i do this, surely I don't have to write the code from scratch or do I have to buy a proprietary library? There are a bunch of different ways to do this. There are articles here on code project that show how to do this, and there's also FreeImage project (http://freeimage.sourceforge.net/). There are lots of other ones as well, google is your friend :) ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned