I have written computer programs over the years for various platforms such as DOS, Windows, Linux, UNIX, and now that I own a MAC that will probably be added to the list of platforms. There are times that I will make use of components, products, and software that has been developed by third-parties, and there are times I just cannot help myself, but use a third-party product because it saves time, specially when it comes to down to deployment. This message really is really for software developers, or even people who write programs and would like to save time when it comes around the time to deploy your product; most of what is being posted is completely free and open source, or completely free and closed source.
Instyler Update-Notify
(http://www.instyler.com/products/lun.asp)
The Instyler Update-Notify application lets users of your product know when there is an update to your product available. There is a small application that creates a file containing the actual information about your product, and there is another file that contains information about the update that is available. The file that contains update information can be uploaded and accessed by WWW and FTP locations, and only is used to determine if the copy on the users’ machine is the latest version or a older version of your product, and if older, the user will be prompted to check for updates. The source code to this product is not available.
Inno Setup
(http://www.innosetup.com/)
Inno Setup is developed and published by Jordan Russell, and is an open source product that may be used for both commercial and personal purposes. The Inno Setup software allows you to create your own professional installation programs for your products that run on Microsoft Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. You may also download older versions of Inno Setup that support Windows 3 series, too. The source code to this product is available, and is written in Delphi 2.0-5.0 according to Jordan Russell’s site.
Nullsoft Scriptable Install System
(http://nsis.sourceforge.net/)
NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) is a professional open source system to create Windows installers. It is designed to be as small and flexible as possible and is therefore very suitable for internet distribution. Being a user's first experience with your product, a stable and reliable installer is an important component of successful software. With NSIS you can create such installers that are capable of doing everything that is needed to setup your software. NSIS is script-based and allows you to create the logic to handle even the most complex installation tasks. Many plug-ins and scripts are already available: you can create web installers, communicate with Windows and other software components, install or update shared components and more. (This description was taken directly from the NSIS site.)
vbAdvance
(http://www.vbadvance.com/)
The vbAdvance site offers two components for Visual Basic 6 developers; one being a Console Support Code (“CSC”) which allows you to write console applications using Visual Basic. The other one allows you to embed Windows XP Theme support into your application, to write Terminal Server Aware (“TSA”) applications, Console Applications, and more. However, the vbAdvance product appears to no longer be sold, but you can still download a 30 day trial and when it expires, you can use only the CSC part.
Visual Studio .NET 2005 Express
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/default.aspx)
You can download the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Express Editions completely free of charge, and write your own programs for Microsoft Windows. If you are new to writing computer programs, these will also be a good source for writing code for Microsoft Windows. You may also purchase the Standard Edition, Professional Edition and others that may be available directly from this site – the Express versions are free, and stripped down versions of the actual Visual Studio .NET suite.
There are also sources all over the internet that contain source code for various languages, and too many too really list, but there are several I visit frequently, or once in a while. For your viewing pleasure, I have put together a very small list of web sites that contain source code (again, various languages):
The reason I posted this is because I was asked questions about programming, and how to compile the source code from human readable format into machine readable code. So I figured I would write this in to the blog, after all, as the blog says, “The useful and useless content for the public.” I hope that you have enjoyed the little bit that I wrote tonight, I may pot more again later, give or take a few hours.
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