Foundation and basic idea
Foundation and basic idea
The idea for the Packaging PowerBench was born when Ivanti classified its DSM product as "non-strategic". At that time, it was expected that DSM would be discontinued eventually and would therefore have to be replaced by another product for DSM's existing customers. However, since DSM was and is unique and unmatched in terms of user-friendliness, simplicity and, in particular, the application packaging capabilities, the new product, based on a technology standard, was to make these features available for any other software distribution tools.
In the area of software packaging, the PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit (ADT) is a well-known open source tool that is already used in many non-DSM environments for packaging applications. However, the entry hurdles are considerable, as the ADT requires extensive PowerShell knowledge and does not offer any comfort or support for script creation. In addition, the standard capabilities of the ADT do not come close to the power of DSM's eScript language by far, so that experienced DSM packagers have considerable wishes left open regarding both user-friendliness and feature set.
The concept of the Packaging PowerBench is to take the standard software ADT and "refine" it. First, script creation without dedicated PowerShell knowledge is possible in a comfortable manner using a graphical editor and, second, the already existing possibilities of the ADT are extended and supplemented. The result can keep up with or even exceed the capabilities of the eScript language.
To summarize, you can think of the PPB as a version of the Packaging Workbench that is independent of DSM and which does not generate eScript code, but standardized PowerShell code based on the ADT, which can be distributed with any software management system and can be executed natively on any Windows system with the corresponding PowerShell version.