Friday 22 January 2010

Naming convention for software deployment

When it comes to organization, I am incredibly anal. I like things to be properly sorted and organized. When deploying software, you need to decide where to store the installation files. Usually it will be on a file share within a domain, for example:-

\\example.local\dfsroot\ClientApps\

Now comes the question of how to organize the folders within. Let us use the example of Adobe Flash Player, which is offered as two versions. One is an activex plugin for IE/MSHTML and the other is a NPAPI (Netscape) plugin used by browsers such as Firefox. It is distributed as two MSI files - install_flash_player_10_active_x.msi and install_flash_player_10_plugin.msi. One gripe I have is that it is not clear from the filename exactly which version it is, nor is it on the website. For the purpose of this example I shall use the fictitious version "10.0.240.1".

I came up with the following variables, the last being my personal favorite.

Adobe\Flash Player\ActiveX\10.0.240.1
Adobe\Adobe Flash Player ActiveX 10.0.240.1
Adobe\Adobe Flash Player\Adobe Flash Player ActiveX 10.0.240.1
Adobe\Adobe Flash Player ActiveX\Adobe Flash Player ActiveX 10.0.240.1
Adobe\Adobe Flash Player\Adobe Flash Player ActiveX\Adobe Flash Player ActiveX 10.0.240.1

What naming convention do you use?

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