Standalone Question

[Stephen Barncard]

Hey, Charles,

The mac platform conveniently packages applications into a special 
folder, which looks to the user in the finder like a double-clickable 
application (with the extension .app), but actually can contain all 
files and folders pertaining to the project, including all stacks, 
drivers, help files, etc.

control-click on a mac standalone package in the finder, and you will 
see a popup menu. Choose "Show Package Contents" and you can drill 
further into it. All the rev stuff is in the 'Mac OS' directory.

Working with Rev on a Mac is a dream. I can be in the IDE editing 
'inside' the standalone, save and at any time launch the same code as 
a standalone, close, then go back to the IDE. And it all ends up in a 
perfect, icon'd package.

The standalone package itself never has to be recreated unless 
there's a change in the launch process, and all the rev 'stuff' is 
there. All the stacks for your project are inside, in the hierarchy 
you designed.

You never have any path or inclusion problems that might happen in 
standalone building because your not building one, and the paths in 
the standalone and when editing are one and the same.

The biggest 'gotcha' that I can attach to this method is that DATE 
BASED BACKUPS  will NOT WORK with stacks saved inside a package like 
this. I know the Finder and my backup program (Folderssynchronizer) 
still thinks my app was last changed on July 6, 2006, when actually 
stacks are changed often.

After discovering this, I used internal Rev calls inside the app to 
compress itself and send a copy to a ftp server offsite.

  I also wrote a short one to compress each stack in the hierarchy to 
an individual component of a multi file document using RevZip. ( I 
love the addition of this to the feature set. )


I would expect Rev on PC would pack everything in the build into a 
non-editable .exe file and using my method that worked on the Mac 
above would require an external folder with the editable stacks 
inside. I think I got that right, but even though I have an 
Enterprise license, I haven't spent much time on the PC side. My pet 
PC broke a while ago...so please - a PC Rev person chime in here..


>When you have a startup stack (splash screen) and a second stack 
>(your application) made into a standalone, it is common for the 
>first stack to be an application and .exe program respectively for 
>the Mac and Windows and the second stack to remain as a Rev stack? I 
>have encountered this for standalones for the Windows and the Mac 
>platforms. I thought both would be made into one application.
>
>
>Charles Szasz
>cszasz at mac.com

-- 


stephen barncard
s a n  f r a n c i s c o
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