2015-10-29: After answers from JTH and others, I have revamped this post for the benefit of others to follow.
I almost choked on my own spittle trying to navigate this site in the hopes of converting an already stand-alone app into a paf.exe. The first challenge is that the starting point isn't so clear. There are 4 use-cases here, and the "Guerilla Field Guide" covers one of them; using it for the others is like using a shotgun to kill a housefly. The four use-cases are:
- Installing a completely stand-alone app into an existing PAF installation. (As the user-help describes, this is as simple as creating a directory for the program, dropping the executable into that directory, and executing "refresh App icons" from within the PAF menu.)
- Refreshing, updating, or site-customizing an existing PA which is already in the PAF.
- Installing a completely stand-alone app within the PAF and packaging it for redistribution as a self-installing
paf.exe
- Installing an application, which is not stand-alone, has dependencies on the Windows registry or external DLLs, and packaging it for redistribution as a self-installing
paf.exe
The Guerilla Field guide covers the last use-case, which is by far the most common and complicated.
The second challenge was caused by a combination of my own exhaustion, my pedantic use of the English language, and the dubious choice of the word "Installer" for the tool that packages an app along with an installer into a .paf.exe
files. I was firmly convinced that I had already installed the "Installer", when in fact, I had installed the installer for the "platform setup". Pardon (*cough*) my confusion on this point. This last point was for me the convergence-point of all my day's frustrations.
A third challenge was the expectation that the "LauncherGenerator" would actually ease the steps of creating the PAF directory for me. Hint: it doesn't. Or, that the downloadable template folder would populate the files required by the Generator. Hint: it does a few.
Many thanks to JTH and the others on this forum and who are involved in this project. Software is difficult, and open software much more so. As frustrated as I was in trying to get this small task accomplished, I was nonetheless impressed by how polished the end-product is and how far it has come in 7+ years since I last began using it.