Running your own App Inventor service

Nov 30, 2011 andrew's Blog

Starting today, the Center for Mobile Learning is distributing Java Archive (JAR) files that let people run their own versions of App Inventor on Google App Engine.

We're still planning to deploy a public App Inventor service some time in the first quarter of 2012, to replace the service that Google will be turning off at the end of December. But we know that many people would like to use App Inventor during the transition period. To help with this, we will be distributing files that allow you to set up your own instance of App Inventor to support a small user community. For example,

• University faculty might deploy an App Inventor service for students in their classes.
• School IT departments might deploy an App Inventor service for students in the school.
• Computer hobbyists might deploy an App Inventor service for their private use or to share with friends.

The JAR files we are starting to distribute today are early prototypes that we are releasing for testing purposes: both testing for us, to identify bugs and other issues, and testing for you to determine whether running your own service would be appropriate during the transition period.

Using these files requires knowledge of App Engine and the willingness/ability to support the load and costs of running AppEngine services. Also, the code is still in an experimental state. We can not guarantee that these files will be bug-free, but we have done enough testing of them to release them publicly, and we'll do what we can to address bugs and release updates in a timely manner.

We've also created a discussion forum at

http://groups.google.com/group/mit-appinventor-jars

where people can share experiences with using these files, and -- especially important -- to report bugs that we need to deal with both for the JAR files and the public App Inventor service we're working on.

You can learn more about the App Inventor JAR files and how to get them at

https://docs.google.com/document/d/124V0q-Jzs8n9LqAlFKnSWxGLei_KZAUQGJUZwlALVws/edit