Hi all,

I hope you are doing well in this "so special" time period. I hope you all of us have some pleasant times ahead of us though!

The motivation of this thread: exchanging on the way you deploy "VFP destkop applications" to-day. I really mean sheer desktop applications, the good old ones we use to build back in the days and deploy with, say, innosetup or the the Dinosaurian installshield.

Those days of the "thick client" are gone of course. But there are still a bunch of business cases for such dinosaurs. And a few of us still produce and, try to to at least, sell them. Distributing windows apps to-day is getting a bit complex. And it gets even more complex when this app is relying on an old architecture such as VFP with applications that include:
1- a vfp-based exe (obfuscated or not),
2- vfp dlls and associated stuff,
3- a significant amount of activeX and other dependencies.
Let us not forget of course registry-level activity required by the stuff above (an action that may require admin rights or obscure manifests to be deployed as well)!

We want our application to deploy in constrained environments (no admin right). My current solution:
1- a zero-dependencies consolidated monolithic executable (with all the material above embedded in a single exe),
2- EV code-signing for this executable in order to secure our users and, possibly, avoid or reduce filtering by antivirus-es or Windows Smartscre
3- deployment as a plain and simple zip file containing both the signed executable and asssociated resource material (help file, example dataset,...).

I am definitely satisfied with the software, boxedapp, used for bundling (no commercial affiliation here!). But of course this creates an additional dependency. No perfect solution in this world:-)

Lately I started to wonder whether should offer on top the current proposition (copy based installation) an additional setup with a more traditional installer. In this later case, what would your recommendation be:
1- use some plain quick and dirty installer-building tool or innosetup,
2- should I make sure to use one that can produce MSI executable installer files (they will be signed)?

Any creative alternative solutions are welcome by the way. We are looking to distribute applications that deploy like large-scale clients apps, such as Zoooooom!

Daniel

PS: Additional question those of you with a comprehensive understanding or experiences of those issues: "can you (and does it make any sense) to forward your executables to leading A-V software shops to reduce unjustified filtering?"