carlorossi

I'm trying to build an installer for a MaxMSP based standalone for Windows XP/Vista.

1 - Are QuickTime and Java still required in Max5 in order to be able to run the application? Are those the only requirements?

2 - Do you know any tool that allows to build an installer that checks if QuickTime and Java are installed to the system and send an error message otherwise?

I'm trying to build an installer for a MaxMSP based standalone for Windows XP/Vista.
Two questions:

1 - Are QuickTime and Java still required in Max5 in order to be able to run the application? Are those the only requirements?
2 - Do you know any tool that allows to build an installer that checks if QuickTime and Java are installed to the system and send an error message otherwise?

windows-standalone-requirements

At least Apples QuickTime is required, yes. But I think Java is NOT required, but not 100% sure. For checking this requirements, you can use e.g. Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and create your own installer. On that way it is easy way to do that. There are also free setup tools on the web. I would exspect that the free installers are able to check that :)

But maybe you are able to check that within Max?! With an JavaScript object? I never tryed that, but you just have to check if that and that file exist on the destination system (don't know, e.g. %ProgramFiles%AppleQuickTime etc.) I'm not sure, but I think that is possible within Max :)

it depends, you don´t need even quicktime for general purposes.

With Max5 you don't necessarily need QT on Windows. However, if you use any of the jit.qt.* objects, you *do* need QuickTime or else your standalone will crash.

You will need Java installed if you use mxj, otherwise not. Your standalone won't crash, just things will silently not work.

Both of these requirements are actually sort of obvious.

There are gazillions of installer builders for Windows. I've looked a bit at InstallJammer, which builds for over a dozen Unices plus Windows. It's free and provides tons of options, and I *think* you can cajole it into testing for both of the above *if* you can figure out reasonable availability tests. I am not aware if Windows has any command-line utilities that would do what Gestalt does on MacOS (ie, identify presence of certain functionalities). You can test whether certain files are present, but this obviously breaks when Apple or Oracle decide to put things in different locations on the next software update.

I would be grateful if anyone with deeper experience on Windows would like to give some pointers on how best to test for QT/Java availability.

There are gazillions of installer builders for Windows. I've looked a bit at InstallJammer, which builds for over a dozen Unices plus Windows. It's free and provides tons of options, and I *think* you can cajole it into testing for both of the above *if* you can figure out reasonable availability tests. I am not aware if Windows has any command-line utilities that would do what Gestalt does on MacOS (ie, identify presence of certain functionalities). You can test whether certain files are present, but this obviously breaks when Apple or Oracle decide to put things in different locations on the next software update. 

I would be grateful if anyone with deeper experience on Windows would like to give some pointers on how best to test for QT/Java availability.


Windows standalone requirements