AIR file too big, breaks during installation

0
votes

A client is having me convert an HTML5 video web application that I've already built into an AIR app.

The end users are going to need this to work with no internet access, so I MUST include a LOT of video files with the installer. This works fine on my machine, but my client can't install it because the .air file is too large and they don't have enough RAM. We'll need this installed on a number of laptops that aren't super powerful.

My SDK is up to date and we're using AIR 3.1.

Has anyone else run into a similar situation? Is there any workaround? For instance could I either include both the installer and the .air in a zipped folder, then have the installer move the video files to the appropriate location, or use AS to have the installer download the files (they will have internet access when installing).

2
actionscript-3air

2 Answers

1
votes

I'd recommend you not to include heavy video files into your application. Downloading assets from web is a descent idea, I use same technique for several museum touchscreen apps.

So here's workflow: on startup app tries to connect to "assets server" and request list of files to download. It can be list of all the files, or list of files that have been updated/added since timestamp that you pass with your request. Then you download them to File.applicationStorageDirectory. Not to have mess in that directory I put all of them to "cache" subdirectory.

In case there's no internet connection for some reason when you install that app, you can have all that "cache" folder on your memory-stick/externalHD so you can manually perform that downloading process.

If you use Greensock's LoaderMax: I've written a simple URLStreamLoader that extends LoaderItem, handy for downloading files. Can share that.

0
votes

The problem is quite obvious: the Adobe AIR provided installer for deploying your application is lacking.

However, Adobe recently released a new feature for deploying Adobe AIR apps: "runtime captive bundle" (Windows or OSX).

Which means 2 important things:

  1. You receive an .exe which no longer requires an user to have Adobe AIR runtime installed (and no more incompatibilities when targeting multiple Adobe AIR runtimes).

  2. You are no longer provided with an installer, and you have to find your own (which solves your problem halfway).

Target bundle when "compiling", and then just use a better installer (Windows or OSX) - think you are just deploying a normal application (worked for me:) ). There are too many installers arround to mention.

Your installer of choice + bundle compiling, together solve your offline installation requirement and the memory exhausting issue.

Packaging a captive runtime bundle for desktop computers