VMware ThinApp Blog

Just wanted to share some tips on how to apply updates to a ThinApped package.

There is three ways of applying updates to a ThinApp project.
1. If you just have a couple of updated files then you simply copy them into the project and rebuild.
2. If the application have a built in mechanism for downloading and applying updates (Mozilla Firefox has for example Help – Check for Updates) then you simply run this feature from within the ThinApped application and all updates will be applied to the sandbox (I recommend WriteCopy as the default isolation mode just to be sure everything is sandboxed). Then you run sbmerge to update the project and then rebuild.
3. If the update is a separate downloaded file you need to run this update within the virtual environment of the package. The simplest way to accomplish this is using a CMD entrypoint (just enable it in the package.ini if you do not have it and rebuild) and launch the downloaded update file from within the cmd. All updates end up in the sandbox (default isolation mode should be WriteCopy) and with sbmerge you update the project and then run build.bat.

Running sbmerge:
1. Open a cmd prompt.
2. Place yourself in the project folder (C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware ThinApp\captures\ApplicationName)
3. Run sbmerge, “C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware ThinApp\sbmerge.exe” Print this will show all changes that will be applied to your project. “C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware ThinApp\sbmerge.exe” Apply will do the actual update to your project. Since there is no reverting sbmerge you should keep a backup of the original projectfolder. The sandbox should be in the default location on this machine. The sandbox will be deleted after the update.