Book Image

VMware ThinApp 4.7 Essentials

By : Peter Bjork
Book Image

VMware ThinApp 4.7 Essentials

By: Peter Bjork

Overview of this book

VMware ThinApp 4.7 is an application virtualization and portable application creator which allows users to package conventional applications so that they are portable. "VMware ThinApp 4.7 Essentials" shows you how to deploy ThinApp packages in order to improve the portability, manageability and compatibility of applications by encapsulating them from the underlying operating system on which they are executed. Application virtualization improves the portability, manageability and compatibility of applications by encapsulating them from the underlying operating system on which they are executed. VMware ThinApp 4.7 is an application virtualization and portable application creator which allows users to package conventional applications so that they are portable. ThinApp eliminates application conflicts, reducing the need and cost of recoding and regression testing. In this book you will learn about how application virtualization works and how to deploy ThinApp packages. You will learn how to update and tweak ThinApp Projects before distribution. This book will then cover design and implementation considerations for future ThinApp projects.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
VMware ThinApp 4.7 Essentials
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Environment variables and ThinApp runtime switches


  • THINSTALL_BIN: It specifies the location of the ThinApp utilities folder. You can find out more information about the THINSTALL_BIN environment variable in Chapter 1, Application Virtualization.

  • %TS_NO_FONTS%: Specifying the %TS_NO_FONTS% environment variable will disable virtualized fonts. The environment variable's value is of no importance. Having a lot of virtualized fonts might slow down the performance of your package. Specifying %TS_NO_FONTS% allows you to launch the package with no fonts. This way, you can easily compare performance with or without fonts included in the package.

Changing the sandbox location

With the help of an environment variable, you can override the sandbox location. Supported environment variables are %THINSTALL_SANDBOX_DIR% and %SandboxName_SANDBOX_DIR%. These environment variables are discussed more in depth in the The sandbox section in Chapter 1, Application Virtualization.

  • %THINSTALL_CACHE_DIR%: You use this environment variable to override the CachePath Package.ini parameter. For more information about the CachePath, please see the Package.ini parameters section in this appendix.

  • %TS_OPTIONS%: %TS_OPTIONS% is created automatically by ThinApp runtime and only exists in the virtual environment. It points to the entry point.

  • %TS_ORIGIN%: %TS_ORIGIN% environment variable only exists within the virtual environment. %TS_ORIGIN% points to the package's data container.

ThinApp runtime switches

There is to my knowledge only one switch that the ThinApp runtime will listen to, and that is -ThinstallVersion. The ThinstallVersion switch will show you which ThinApp runtime version the package contains. All other switches added to a package will be passed through to the virtualized executable (the source of the entry point).