Preprocessing for launcher

Dear John,

Looking through different launchers it seems every one is different specific depending on the current application. Currently developers just have to 'wing it' to make a new launcher.

Now I know you are planning (or already building) a kind of installer/launcher creation application which I really look forward to. But before you can make the app itself you have to create a launcher that features every possible action needed to make an installer.

I'm guessing you will make some kind of conditional compiling script that includes parts of script on demand on compile time, probably using !define and !ifdef and so on. This makes sure the script is only included if it's needed by setting up defines for various tasks.

I imagine it being something like this. You start up a GUI where the user can create a 'profile' for the application to build a launcher and installer for. This profile just contains name, version, links etc. to the bare minimum needed and derives the extended names from that. Then the user adds folders, files and registry settings created by the application and who knows, some more details.

The next step is the GUI conditionally compiler a launcher which will be suitable for the application to make it portable. Optionally (for a very distant future) This GUI also might handle compressing of the application, generating appinfo and maybe even the Help.html plus the required folder lay out.

This will allow developers to concentrate on finding what the app needs to be done to make a portable version and making maintaining the apps and launcher/installer versions much more streamlined. This GUI will also make creating a release much less error prone.

What developement IDE will you be using for creation of such an application? My hope is that you create a GUI that does not have to be updated with every change you make to the scripts somehow. This will let you concentrate on building better launchers/installers instead of having to update the GUI for every app.

The resulting PortableApp will be very cool but it will not have the scripts of the portable Installer/Launcher. While this might be opening the way to having non GPL apps supported it also makes recompiling the portable launchers impossible. Meaning, people will not be able to create their own distribution of the portable app. I still hope that you make the sources (ie profiles) available for Open Source apps and include them in the app download or make them available seperate.

Are you still in the planning phase on this or are you already working on something concrete?

Awaiting any news on anything portable...