I have a Qt 4.8-based application that runs on Windows 7 and uses Qt Assistant to display documentation. I've frequently had headaches with Qt Assistant relating to the need to delete cached files whenever I update documentation (I keep reading that cache problems have been fixed in various Qt updates, but the problems I have seem to persist). This occurs when I launch Assistant from within my application or directly from the command line (with assistant.exe -collectionFile myapp.qhc).
This is a major problem when I'm distributing my application to users. It's not OK to expect them to delete cached files on their systems.
I couldn't find anything in the Qt documentation on how to clear the user's cached help files. Is there something I'm missing?
I have also compiled my application for Linux, and don't seem to have the same problem there. It's just Windows.
I use ant to build flex application and sign it with self generated certificate, it works fine for a long time with "Flex 4.6 & AIR 3.5"
Today I've tried the latest SDK "Flex 4.10 & AIR 3.9" but my build script doesn't work on OSX because of some problems with certificate:
[INFO] [org.gradle.api.internal.project.ant.AntLoggingAdapter] [ant:java] Packaging failed. Make sure your computer time is in sync and your certificate is valid
In the same time it works with latest SDK on Windows.
I've tried to generate new certificate or use another OSX but result still the same.
I received the same problem when I had 450MB video files included the project. The problem was the file size was too big. I left the video files out of the project and could successfully publish it. Then I put the video files into the project folders manually.
Apparently, this is a known issue with the AIR SDK. I don't know why or how it suddenly stopped working for people, but the fix is to remove the section from air app descriptor .xml file.
See this link for more info, and perhaps a heads-up when Adobe fix the problem for real.
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1317862#5771096
I have to make an application that will do the following:
Open a video file embedded in the application
Open some pdf files, preferably embedded in the application, but if it will have to open externally, it's no problem.
Work in fullscreen on the user computer, with a minimum resolution of 1024x768. I'm thinking about a resolution of 1024x768, centered on a black background.
I was thinking of using Flash, but I don't have much experience, so if there is another easier IDE that creates a Flash application, I would prefer that.
So, if anyone knows any Flash component to do this, I'll be very thankful.
Creating a Flash CDROM takes a little bit of care, but from my experience it's well worth it. From your requirements, the Flash IDE is well up to the task. The common requirements are as follows:
Windows / Mac platform
Flash Projector file
Autorun file (For the Windows platform)
Net access or all local
If your client is happy with creating the CDROM just for Windows, there will be very few dramas - but if they want to create a Mac-friendly version, you can do that too and I will explain afterwards.
Your Flash should preferably be an .exe projector file - the reason for this is so that the Windows user can open your app without downloading a Flash player (If the client wants a CDROM, they probably have limited net access, so this is a good thing!)
Within Flash, you can perform all your standard fs commands including full-screen.
You will likely need an Autorun file so that the user sees your application as soon as you put in the CDROM - simply create a file named 'autorun.inf' in notepad and enter the following:
[autorun]
open=yourProjector.exe
Where 'yourProjector.exe' is the name and path of your projector file.
It sounds like you're going to embed your videos and content in the CDROM - this is usually the ideal case, since your client won't receive annoying security messages, but this can also be a bad thing if you want to correct your content later (spotting errors after a thousand CDROMS have been distributed can be a PAIN).
You can serve some of your content online to avoid this, but it would give your user some ugly messages, so as long as you triple-check your content and embed everything, it would be the best scenario.
Now for a Mac, Apple has done away with autorun features years ago - there is a way to turn it on through Quicktime, but this is off by default for almost all Mac users, and turning it on is not recommended because it makes the Mac vulnerable to the 'Hong Kong Virus', one of the few Mac viruses around.
You can make your CDROM mac-friendly by creating a Mac Projector and adding instructions for how to use it by changing the background image of the CDROM window. I haven't had to do it before, but I hear that it's not too difficult.
You can use the Flash Projector. Here is a tutorial to get you started. Now, you won't be able to embed the PDF files but you can open them easily enough using fscommand("exec","foo.pdf")
You can create an Adobe AIR Application; however it won't run off the CD ROM; it'll need to be installed locally.
If creating a projector from Flash Pro doesn't work; look at a tool like Janus or Zinc
I love applications that are able to update themselves without any effort from the user (think: Sparkle framework for Mac). Is there any code/library I can leverage to do this in a Qt application, without having to worry about the OS details?
At least for Windows, Mac and user-owned Linux binaries.
I could integrate Sparkle on the Mac version, code something for the Linux case (only for a standalone, user-owned binary; I won't mess with distribution packaging, if my program is ever packaged), and find someone to help me on the Windows side, but that's horribly painful.
It is not a complete solution, but a cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) tool for creating packages for auto-updates and installing them is available at https://github.com/mendeley/Update-Installer. This tool does not deal with publishing updates or downloading them.
This was written for use with a Qt-based application but to make the update installer small, standalone and easy to build, the installer uses only standard system libraries (C++ runtime, pthreads/libz/libbz2 on Linux/Mac, Win32 API on Windows, Cocoa on Mac, GTK with fallback on Linux). This simplifies delivering updates which include new versions of Qt and other non-system libraries that your application may depend on.
Before considering this though, I would suggest:
If you are only building for two platforms, consider using standard and well-tested auto-update frameworks for those platforms - eg. Sparkle on Mac, Google's Omaha on Windows or auto-update systems built into popular install frameworks (eg. InstallShield). I haven't tried BitRock.
On Mac, the Mac App Store may be a good option. See https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-16549 though.
On Linux, consider creating a .deb package and a simple repository to host it. Once users have a repository set up, the system-wide software update tools will take care of checking for and installing new releases. The steps for setting up a new repository however are too complex for many new Ubuntu/Debian users. What we did, and also what Dropbox and Google have done, is to create a .deb package which sets up the repository as part of the package installation.
A few other notes on creating an updater:
On Windows Vista/7, if the application is installed system-wide (eg. in C:\Program Files\$APPNAME) your users will see a scary UAC prompt when the updater tries to obtain permissions to write to the install directory. This can be avoided either by installing to a user-writable directory (I gather that this is what Google Chrome does) or by obtaining an Authenticode certificate and using it to sign the updater binary.
On Windows Vista/7, an application .exe or DLL cannot be deleted if in use, but the updater can move the existing .exe/DLL out of the way into a temporary directory and schedule it for deletion on the next reboot.
On Ubuntu, 3rd-party repositories are disabled after distribution updates. Google works around this by creating a cron-job to re-add the repository if necessary.
Shameless plug: Fervor, a simple multiplatform (Qt-based) application autoupdater inspired by Sparkle.
Shameless plug: this a relatively old question, but I thought that it may be useful to mention a library that I created recently, which I named "QSimpleUpdater". Aside from notifying you if there's a newer version, it allows you to download the change log in any format (such as HTML or RTF) and download the updates directly from your application using a dialog.
As you may expect from a Qt project, it works on any platform supported by Qt (tested on Windows, Mac & Linux).
Links:
Website
GitHub repository
Screenshot:
Though it works a bit differently than Sparkle, BitRock InstallBuilder contains an autoupdater written in Qt that can be used independently (disclaimer, I am the original BitRock developer). It is a commercial app, but we have free licenses for open source projects.
I've developed an auto-updater library which works beautifully on Mac OS X, Linux and pretty much every Unix that allows you to unlink a file while the file is still open. The reason being that I simply extracted the downloaded package on top of the existing application. Unfortunately, because I relied on this functionality, I ran into problems on Windows as Windows does not let you unlink an open file.
The only alternative I could find is to use MoveFileEx with the replace on reboot flag, but that is awful.
However, renaming the working directory of the application works on Windows 7 and Windows XP. I haven't tried Windows Vista yet.
I have found WebUpdate to be quite useful, though it's written with the wxWidgets. But don't worry, it's a separate app which handles your updates. The steps to integrate it are pretty simple - just write two XML files and run the updater. And yes, it's cross-platform.
The advantage of it is it will automatically download and unzip/install all you required and not just provide a popup with a notification about a new version and a link to download it. Another thing you can do with it is customizable actions.
Project's main page is here, you can read the docs or take a look at the official tutorial.
The blog post Mixing Cocoa and Qt may solve the problem for the Mac platform.
You can use UpdateNode which gives you all the possibilities to update your software. It's using a cross platform Qt client and is free for Open Source!
UPDATE
Just did some further analysis on that and really like this solution:
Pros:
Free for Open Source!!! Even the client is Open Source: https://github.com/updatenode/unclient
The client is already localized in several languages
Very flexible in terms of updates. You can even update single non-binaries.
Provides additionally a way to display messages though the client.
Ready to use binaries & installer for all common Linux distributions, single Windows binary, as well as installer and a solution for Mac (which I have not tried, as I don't have a Mac)
Easy to use web service, nice statistics and update check is integrated within few minutes
Cons:
I am missing a multi-user management in the online service. Maybe they will do it in future - I will definitely suggest that in their feedback portal
The client is a GUI client only - so, you will need to shrink it down to run without a GUI frontend (maybe only necessary for people like me ;-) )
So, bottom line, as this solution is quite new, I think there is lot of potential here. I will definitely use it in my project and I am looking forward for more from them! Thumbs up!
This is an old question but there is not Squirrel in answers which is BEST SOLUTION , here is what I'm doing in qt 5.12.4 with qt quick "my qml app" you can do this in any other language
I'm doing this in windows there is mac version of squirrel too, I don't know about Linux
download nuget package explorer release
https://github.com/NuGetPackageExplorer/NuGetPackageExplorer/releases
open nuget package explorer and add this directory 'lib/net45' it doesn't matter you have a .net app or not, I did this for my qt application otherwise it won't work.
add all files into this folder specify your version in the metadata
save nupkg file
download squirrel release https://github.com/Squirrel/Squirrel.Windows/releases
add squirrel to windows environment path
open cmd and cd to directory of nupkg file
squirrel --releasify file_name.nupkg -> now inide releases folder, there should be setup.exe file which will install app and other files.
to create new version do 2,3,4,7,8 again if its an update it will create delta file which is only needed file to update, put this files into your service directory for example in updates folder of your website which you need to disable directory browsing in IIS , and to auto-update application you need to call Update.exe which is in parent folder of application root directory appdir/../update.exe --update http://yourserver.com/upates/ after application restart app should start with new version
you can find documentation for squirrel in https://github.com/Squirrel/Squirrel.Windows/blob/develop/docs/getting-started/0-overview.md and nuget package explorer here https://github.com/NuGetPackageExplorer/NuGetPackageExplorer and you can use only nuget.exe too if you don't want to use nuget package explorer which can be used for dynamic generation of versions, which can be download from https://www.nuget.org/downloads
That easy. Now you have auto-update app which will download updates from the server and auto-update app. For more info you can read documentations.
note: for iis uses https://github.com/Squirrel/OldSquirrelForWindows/issues/205
I suggest you read on plugin and how to create and use them. If your application architecture is modular and be split into different plugins. Take a look at Google Auto Update utility http://code.google.com/p/omaha/. We use this.
Thibault Cuvelier is writing a tutorial (in French) to develop an updater. I know the explanations are in French (and everyone is not understanding French), but I think this can be readable with a web translator like Google Translate. With this you will have a cross-platform updater, but you need to write it by yourself.
For what I know, the only part of the updater that is explained in the tutorial, is the file downloading part. In the case this can help you, refer to the tutorial, Un updater avec Qt.
I hope that helps.
OK, so I guess I take it as a "no (cross-platform) way". It's too bad!
I have found a solution that can be automated with built-in self-extracting patches and updates. for windows. I have started using their sdk. take a look at the massive documentation here, https://agersoftware.com/docs/ the sdk is called securesdk and comes with their app, SecureDelta sdk. does a great job on any kind of files, better results than lzma-included delta updaters
An application I wrote for a client almost 2 years ago using Flex 2 has stopped playing the .flv videos. It's been nearly 9 months since I've had to perform any updates to the app, so I don't have the source code on the computer I'm using at the moment. I'm not sure how often the client uses the application, so I can't say exactly when this started.
The videos just displays a black screen, does not load the first frame. I believe I used standard VideoDisplay object. The videos are contained in a folder on the same shared account as the application.
I've checked the application in latest versions of IE, Firefox and Chrome (running Flash 10) and I've also fired up a virtual machine to test it out in IE 7 with various releases of Flash 9 instead of Flash 10.
I checked, and the videos are still present, and I scattered some extra no-security cross-domain files around... but to no avail.
Does anyone have an ideas as to where I should start looking when I get back to my development computer? Could a change on the hosted server cause this?
UPDATE: I remembered another application with video that I had on the site that was made more recently using Flex 2. This application is a simple shell VideoDisplay object that serves up a .flv file in the same directory... and it works just fine.
So, the server is serving .flv files. The application I'm having problems with pulls .flv files from a different folder that is at the same level of the applications parent folder (the only difference I can see right now).
The someone cryptic error message received when using the debugging version of the Flash player was:
Error: 1000: No bitrate match
at mx.controls.videoClasses::VideoPlayer/play()
After getting back to my development machine I was able to determine that the XML file containing the URLs of the videos showed an old variant of the domain name that was in use a couple of years ago. This domain name was just allowed to expire, and so, the video player was pointing to .flv filenames no longer existed. Correcting the domain name resolved the problem.
You said the videos are still present, but are the being served?
A small hosting configuration change might cause files to no longer be served.
I would start there, you rule out that both your swf, and flv are accessible by the client browsers..
If it's on a new server, make sure it's serving the right mime type for .flv files, video/x-flv. I've had flash refuse to play videos without that set. Also, IIS now gives bogus 404 errors on requests to files of unknown mime type, so files can be on the servers, but invisible to clients. http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/rymoore/adding-flv-mime-type-in-iis-4198