By Tina de Benedictis, Senior Technical Marketing Manager, End-User Computing, VMware
VMware ThinApp 5.0.1 has just been released, and although this is a minor release number, some new features will make a difference in your application-packaging life.
Package.ini parameters now case-insensitive
Have you ever set a value for a Package.ini parameter, only to find out after much troubleshooting that it did not take effect because you did not copy the exact capitalization for the parameter? Well, no longer do you need to worry about capitalization for a Package.ini parameter! Package.ini parameters are now case-insensitive, so you can use all caps, all lowercase, or mixed case, and you will be correct no matter what you do. Thank you, ThinApp engineers!
For more information on setting Package.ini parameters, see the ThinApp Package.ini Parameters Reference Guide.
Enhanced tracking of ThinApp capture and deployment scenarios
When you opt in to sending your packaging information to VMware in the Quality Assurance Statistics window of ThinApp Setup Capture, what do you think is going on? You may in fact opt out because you think you want your packaging information private. But everyone gains if you opt in. And with ThinApp 5.0.1, VMware is collecting more information about your capture and deployment operating systems. This information helps VMware to know where to focus engineering efforts. By opting in, you are helping not only yourself, but also others like you. Opting in is essentially your vote for the most popular capture and deployment scenarios.
Link from Setup Capture Welcome window to virtualization guidelines
A new ThinApp user might think that virtualizing an application is straightforward. Yes, it is easy to virtualize an application with ThinApp. However, the intricacies of some applications, and the different ways that organizations use those applications, means that after you package your application, you may find that it does not work under some users’ circumstances. To avoid finding that out after you distribute the virtualized application to users, you get a link in the Welcome window of Setup Capture, which leads to a VMware Knowledge Base article with tips on virtualizing various applications.
Specifically, the KB article leads to help in packaging various browsers and Microsoft Office versions, and also points to some frequently asked questions and policies about ThinApp packaging. This KB article is the key to successful application packaging.
More parameters now in Package.ini by default
You asked, and we listened! Two commonly used parameters are now displayed in Package.ini and commented out, so that you don’t have to remember their names if you want to change their values from the defaults:
- ChildProcessEnvironmentDefault
- ChildProcessEnvironmentExceptions
These parameters are within [BuildOptions] in Package.ini. The values in the commented-out lines in Package.ini are not the default values being used by ThinApp, but instead are values that you might want to change to.
The default values of these parameters are
- ChildProcessEnvironmentDefault=Virtual
- ChildProcessEnvironmentExceptions: No default; these are exceptions to the value for ChildProcessEnvironmentDefault
Of course, these parameters held these default values before they were listed in Package.ini, but now they are prominently displayed so that you can easily change their values. Customer feedback informed us that you often needed to change the values of these parameters from their defaults, and you also did not want to have to remember the names of these parameters. So we made life easier for you by placing these parameters in Package.ini.
For more information on these parameters, see the ThinApp Package.ini Parameters Reference Guide.
Have we given you enough reasons to update to ThinApp 5.0.1? For more information, see the ThinApp 5.0.1 Release Notes.
