I am writing an application in Java for the desktop using the Eclipse SWT library for GUI rendering. I think SWT helps Java get over the biggest hurdle for acceptance on the desktop: namely providing a Java application with a consistent, responsive interface that looks like that belonging to any other app on your desktop. However, I fe...
I've been told that I should include PAD files with the freeware applications I distribute so hosting sites can list the information correctly and check for updates, etc. Can you give me some info on using PAD files? Here are general questions which come to mind: Is it worth the effort? Do you use PADGen or an online tool like www.pa...
I've read some about .egg files and I've noticed them in my lib directory but what are the advantages/disadvantages of using then as a developer? ...
I am developing an application in using Ruby on Rails, mostly as an excuse to learn the language. This is not intended to be a web-based application - and perhaps I have chosen the wrong language, but... My understanding is, that in order to run an instance of this application on somebody else's computer, they would need to install rub...
Java is one of my programming languages of choice. I always run into the problem though of distributing my application to end-users. Giving a user a JAR is not always as user friendly as I would like and using Java WebStart requires that I maintain a web server. What's the best way to distribute a Java application? What if the Java a...
This question is a follow up on one of my other questions, Can I legally Incorporating GPL & LGPL, open-sourced software in a proprietary, closed-source project? Many of the conditions of the LGPL license are based on the notion of distribution. My company does business as a consultant. We are contracted to create software, which we del...
I am curious about how do you protect your software against cracking, hacking etc. Do you employ some kind of serial number check? Hardware keys? Do you use any third-party solutions? How do you go about solving licensing issues? (e.g. managing floating licenses) EDIT: I'm not talking any open source, but strictly commercial softwar...
We're looking to replace our current, in-house developed trial-version activation system for our .NET application with something off the shelf. To clarify the question I'm asking, let me point out some ground we've already covered (and related questions already asked here), and some other requirements we have: We're convinced that we ...
This is really annoying, we've switched our client downloads page to a different site and want to send a link out with our installer. When the link is created and overwrites the existing file, the metadata in windows XP still points to the same place even though the contents of the .url shows the correct address. I can change that URL p...
One thing I've always wondered about is how software patches work. A lot of software seems to just release new versions on their binaries that need to be installed over older versions, but some software (operating systems like Windows in particular) seem to be able to release very small patches that correct bugs or add functionality to e...
In what way can you get your freeware project some exposure? I'm more interested in answers involving downloadable desktop software. ...
I've got an iPhone app with icon file Icon.png. This icon shows up properly when the app is on the phone itself, but it doesn't show up in the applications pane in iTunes. What do I need to do to get it to show up properly? ...
I've got simple java-based ppt->swf sub-project that basically works. The open source software out there, OpenOffice.org and JODConverter do the job great. The thing is, to do this I need to install OO.o and run it in server mode. And to do that I have to install OO.o, which is allot of software (~160MB) just to convert the source PPT...
This is not strictly programming related, but I hope still relevant. I'm working on a project which is written in Java and intended for use on PCs and Macs. It will be distributed on CD (and perhaps DVD, eventually). Our intended audience is decidedly non-technical and, as such, it's important the CD "just work" when it's loaded. Thi...
I've explored python for several years, but now I'm slowly learning how to work with c. Using the python documentation, I learned how to extend my python programs with some c, since this seemed like the logical way to start playing with it. My question now is how to distribute a program like this. I suppose the heart of my question is...
Currently at my job, we are distributing installers for our windows base software via an apache web server on a Ubuntu server using apache authentication. When we initially started doing this we only had 3 projects to distribute and as such, 3 htpasswd files to manage. Since then, we have grown and are now distributing 8 projects as we...
I am looking to distribute an open source iPhone app and I have a few questions about making the source distribution: 1) How can I automate creating the source archive (or diskimage) with XCode? I want something along the lines of a build target which archives the source (cleaning targets first if necessary, but it would be nice if it d...
There have been a few timely posts about IP security and the like, but none that I can find that specifically address an algorithm. In one of my current projects, we've decided to go the route of an offline registration key system. I imagine most of our eventual user base will be honest, so I don't think we have too much to worry about....
I have a WinForm application built with VS 2008 (C#) and SQL Server Express 2008 that is currently deployed on test users PC. I have modifications to do on the database structure (add fields, tables, etc.) and I wonder what's the best method to distribute the changes on the users PC (without loosing the users data). From what I've lear...
I have received a request of buying the source code of a website I have developed and I wondered if anybody have been in the same situation and if there is anything I should specially be aware of. Anybody got some advise on how I should handle this situation? ...