Abstract: A system is provided for automatically generating electronic artifacts using extended functionality. In particular, the system may use a template-based process to automatically generate artifacts based on a defined set of parameters and/or variables. The system may further use one or more plugins which may provide extended functionality with respect to the artifact generation process. Accordingly, the artifact generation process may include initializing a parameter list based on application parameters and/or plugin parameters, processing the parameters, generating variables based on the parameters, and replacing variables in scheme template files with appropriate values (e.g., user supplied or plugin generated values) to output an artifact file to a predetermined location. In this way, the system provides a robust and efficient way to automatically generate artifacts.

Abstract: The present invention discloses a method, apparatus, and article of manufacture for distributing a software application residing on a network, from a source computer coupled to the network, to a remote computer via electronic mail. At the source computer, the present invention identifies the software installation components that reside on the source computer. These software installation components are used to install the software application. The identified software installation components are compared to the remote computer's software installation components. This comparison determines which software installation components are missing from the remote computer. To provide the files required for installation of the software application, the present invention transfers the missing software installation components from the source computer to the remote computer.