InstallAware X17 launching on Friday this week future-proofs code signing in an age of proliferating standards and vendors; is first to implement a 4 GB compression dictionary with new aarch64 binary filters, 30% faster execution, and performance core scheduling.
San Francisco, CA, December 16, 2024 – InstallAware Software, the technology leader in software installation, repackaging, and virtualization solutions for app developers and enterprises, is launching InstallAware X17 on Friday this week. InstallAware is the most flexible platform for traditional and agile development teams creating Linux, macOS, Windows and Azure software installers; as well as MSIX, APPX, App-V Virtualization, and agentless/royalty-free InstallAware Virtualization packages.
InstallAware X17 confers instant trust on packages it signs via its implementation of Azure Trusted Signing. Unlike Ordinary Verification certificates which are easy to obtain but require weeks to months of use before being trusted by Windows, and also unlike Extended Verification certificates which do confer the benefit of instant trust but at the great inconvenience of physical dongle requirements (destroying build automation/cloud capabilities); Azure Trusted Signing grants complete trust with purely electronic signing.
InstallAware X17 also future-proofs its code signing process by implementing new Code Signing Hooks: Any time the IDE (or the command line build tool/automation interface/any other member of its toolchain) would sign a binary, the hooks trigger and execute any number of custom command line(s); making it trivial to integrate with any present or future vendor and/or standard, and also to seamlessly sign any file being packaged per your project’s active code signing policy and settings, as a natural part of your builds.
InstallAware X17 updates its compression engine for the first time this decade, addressing the emerging challenges, and leveraging the key inventions of modern processors and operating systems. A 30% per-core CPU speedup accelerates even non-parallelizable workloads, ensuring the swiftest processing times in all of your scenarios. Native compression processes for x86, AMD64, and aarch64 platforms ensure code runs without any emulation, ensuring the highest execution speeds on raw-metal without any overhead.
While modern operating systems schedule tasks on efficiency and low-power efficiency cores, in a well-intentioned effort to save power; this often destroys build performance (especially when build tasks run in the background and have no user visible pixels). InstallAware X17 schedules your compression jobs on your CPU’s performance cores, preventing any efficiency relegation, even for automated build pipelines.
New compression dictionary sizes of 2 GB, 3 GB, and 4 GB ensure you’re always building your smallest setups. New binary filters for aarch64 executables complete this round of InstallAware X17’s compression upgrades, eliminating common instructions that are native to this proliferating processor architecture.
Windows 11 24H2 and Windows Server 2025 are newly supported official deployment targets in InstallAware X17. You may also configure Windows Features and Server Roles (for all released Windows versions) directly from your setups, with the convenience of an interface matching Windows’s own feature selection user experience, thus helping you provision x86/AMD64/aarch64 Windows installations with IIS, Hyper-V, PDF, and any other platform feature(s) your application deployments may require.
InstallAware X17 concludes its roundup of new features by adding in support for the latest application runtimes shipping from Redmond, including .NET 9.0.0, .NET 8.0.11, .NET 7.0.20, .NET 6.0.36, and Visual C++ Runtimes 2015-2024. These runtimes are added to existing projects in a single-click, and optionally downloaded at installation time only when required. They may be shared across multiple setup projects when placed inside Web Media Blocks, always securely signed and redundantly downloaded.
About InstallAware Software
InstallAware Software, founded in 2003, is the leading Cloud Infrastructure Company with its laser sharp focus on bullet-proof enterprise software deployment and repackaging – now supporting Linux and macOS targets as first-class citizens, in addition to Windows. InstallAware has been recognized by multiple awards coming from Microsoft, SDTimes "Leader of the Software Development Industry", Visual Studio Magazine Reader's Choice Gold Award, among other recognition. InstallAware X17 is available in a free edition for all Visual Studio users, and paid editions with prices starting at $474. For a fully functional 14-day trial and more information, visit www.installaware.com.
Jason Strathmore
InstallAware Software
336 Guerrero
San Francisco, CA 94103
888 566 2976
jase@installaware.com
http://www.installaware.com/
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