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<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> RayPack > 7.3 u6 > User Guide > Appendix I: How to Set Up Your Packaging Environment Prerequisite Software |
Since the packages are designed to be installed on specific operating systems, the packaging results have to be tested on those operating systems. If capturing is utilized, best practice is to perform it on a blank target operating system. Therefore, maintaining licenses and ideally prepared (virtual) machines as well is a must have for high quality packaging results.
As already mentioned, it is usual to virtualize testing and capturing machines. If the maintenance of a park of physical machines is not wanted, set up a virtual environment. Either just a bunch of loose images, or a more sophisticated solution, based on ESX, Hyper-V or any other common server technology. Preparing standard images for repeated usage does not only reduce the setup time per packaging job, but also leads to more reliable and comparable results. Reproducing errors during evaluation and quality control phases may take noticeable more time on even only slightly differing machines. Therefore it is recommended to utilize virtualization to make sure that identical sources are used where uniformity is required.
Packaging starts with the incoming software material. Nowadays world of software formats beholds a jungle of requirements. Not every vendor delivers standard compliant software, and for sure some packages that are delivered will be erroneous. Before starting to manipulate the original sources, it is of vital importance for a packaging job to check them for completeness regarding licenses, prerequisites, optional add-ons, and so on. Evaluate the raw material by installing and uninstalling it on a test machine. If a client does not deliver an installation handbook or a detailed target package description, prepare it and go for client approval. Keep a copy of the original sources for later reference. Make sure that the desired packaging result can be achieved with the given resources. Please keep in mind that it is part of packaging Best Practice to avoid changes to vendor MSIs if not absolutely necessary. In most cases it is absolutely sufficient to add transforms to the original material, which allows to make sure vendor support can be contacted in case of issues with the original installer material.