I’ve recently had my first experience with distributing a beta version of a freeware VB6 program I created worldwide and it’s left a bad taste in my mouth. I used VB6’s Package and Deployment Tool to create the setup files. I’ve often used it deploy apps on workstations at my place of employ. In nearly all those attempts the deployment worked exactly as planned but these are workstations where we control their full configuration and installed components.
The emails started rolling in immediately from all over the world about install failures where the install balked at version imcompatibilities and requested the user to reboot. That reboot resulted in them getting nowhere. Now this wasn’t a terribly complicated program that required a bunch of aftermarket controls and dlls. For the most part, I was using the controls and references that came packaged with VB6 and the latest service pack.
Why in the world can’t Visual Basic, a Microsoft product, produce a deployment package that will run on their own operating systems? For crying out loud, should developers have to have this in-depth knowledge of every possible computer setup out there to ensure their app will install properly? What a flawed system. I should be able to write code, compile it and deploy it using the defaults the package and deployment wizard set for me without having to know the dependencies and compatibilities of the latest Windows service packs and patches.
How have the rest of you dealt with these problems in the past?
Thanks,
Art Martin
