This page describes how to
deploy ALP applications with ALPFrame without installing the ALP
first. If you are going to install your application on the target
machine and ALP engine beside it - then the limitations
mentioned here are not applicable for your application - you can use
ALPFrame as a host by creating the appropriate shortcut or URL - see
also ALPFrame command line.
ALPFrame redistribution package (available for the registered
customers) has the following structure:
Its root directory contains ALPFrame.exe and alpframe.cfg files.
ALP engine and supporting components are in the ComonFiles
subdirectory of the package.
To pack your application using that package create a subfolder for
it and place entire tree of your application in it. Use alp.site
file to mark that directory as site root for the application. This
file can be empty, but registered users should place their license in
it. All the alp.xxx files are in your application tree thus in most
cases (if you have prepared that files before creating deployment
package) you do not need to do anything more than coping its directory
tree in the created subfolder.
Then you need to take a look over the alpframe.cfg file. You can
change the start page by editing the (string)HomePage option in
the alpframe.cfg. For example if
you have created a subfolder named myapp and your start page is
start.asp - you can set that option to myapp/start.asp. If your
application has a default document you can just set the value to the
name of the subfolder (see also alp.directory
for information how you can specify the default documents for a given
site).
The package also contains in its root folder sample autorun.inf
file and a page used as start page - mostly useful to test the package
consistency. If you are not going to deploy your application as an
auto-run CD you can delete the autorun.inf file or you can edit it to
change some settings (such as the icon and disc label). If you are
packaging several applications in one - for example by putting them in
a separate subfolders then probably you will want to create a page
that displays a list of choices to the user - you can replace the
sample start page (default.htm) with yours instead of deleting it and
changing the HomePage in the alpframe.cfg.
Adding additional ActiveX components to the application.
If you want to make available additional ActiveX components for
your ASP pages in the packaged applications - then you will need to
list them in the alpframe.cfg file. See the ActiveX list in the alpframe.cfg
page for the syntax description. Also your components must be able to
load their type libraries directly without accessing the registry -
how to do that? See the code snippets section on our site for the
extended typeinfo holder class for ATL. The sample contains
information how to use the class in your ATL components. If the
development tool used to create ActiveX-es doesn't allow such a
technique then unfortunately you have no choice - you must install
them on the user's system. If you are trying to minimize the
installation UI and size you can use the ALPInstall
utility instead of some of the larger and powerful installation
programs.
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