RapidEXE Reviews

This is a simple way to turn a standalone PHP file (that doesn't need a browser) into an EXE file for ease of use under Windows, even when PHP has not been installed. It comes with recent versions of the PHP and Python interpreters that can be chosen in its configuration files. The big problem is that the generated EXE file is 5 MB heavy, with no apparent necessity for it to be more than, say, 100 KB in size, since the interpreters are external to the generated EXE, and it offers no other major features. Another problem is that its help files are only accessible from the main program (rapidexe.exe) via tedious commands to access one short "chapter" at a time.

[edit] I decided to upgrade the rating from 1 star to 2 stars. After some thought on the problem mentioned, I decided to run a test program from a bat file that ended with a pause command. The program was simple a print command that outputted "hello this is php." Because of the pause, the command prompt did not immediately close and I could see that the program did function as intended. It appears that RapidEXE is a tool for compiling command line programs. As is often the case; time will tell if I find this completely useful or not. [end edit] Well, I can say that this is a good idea. I had hoped to be able to give this a good mark but the end result makes this pretty much a useless program. I set up a php file, compiled it with RapidEXE and ran the subsequent exe file. A command prompt opened and closed. That's not what I expected so I tried again and got the same result. Oh wait a minute I thought, I'll run the example, I must be doing something wrong. So I copied the files over, compiled the program, ran the exe file and a command prompt opened and closed. With a very limited help section within the app itself, no additional documentation and apparently, no source code to download and study for possible mods and improvements RapidEXE ends up a complete flop. One of the things I have noticed in the Open Source community is an extremely annoying habit of developers presuming that everyone that comes across their tool, code or website knows exactly what they are talking about and leave a majority of what should be in the documentation, up for the individual to figure out for themselves. I guess no one has bothered to tell them that they are not that important, especially when one cannot access the code for consideration. It's really too bad too. Cause RapidEXE does seem to have promise.

I like this project even if I found 1 bug and 1 problem: -1- Project must be in the same DISK of the RapidEXE If you use a full path instead of simple dir, it is ignored and last dir path only will be used. -2- Exe file is lunched (expanded) in a "remote and always changing dir" like "C:\Users\MYWINUSER\AppData\Local\Temp\rapidexeTemp\script\190929-184912-157-9148\" (some sort of date-time-secs) Point 2 isn't a perfect solution, it would be nice to be able to specify a destination dir (always that one) as often it is necessary to create temporary files or SQLite db to store config of application that must be rebuild in this way :-(. I suggest to create a new compilation directive to the "rapidexe.app.config" like "default apppath ." where "." is the path from which the app has been lunched, or even something like "C:\DATA\MYAPP\". Anyway very nice, I like it! As soon as I have time I'll take a look at the code. Good job for now! Luca