Air-gapped deployment

Definition

Running software in an environment with no network route to the internet, so every dependency it needs must already be inside the boundary.

Air-gapping is common in defence, critical infrastructure, some healthcare estates and any environment where the threat model includes exfiltration rather than only intrusion. Getting anything in means media and a documented process, not a package manager.

The requirement quietly disqualifies a great deal of commercial software, and licensing is usually the reason rather than functionality. Any product that validates its licence against a vendor endpoint — at startup, or periodically — simply cannot run there. Offline activation has to be a design decision made early, not a flag added later.

Updates work the same way: they arrive on media, on your schedule. Which means the version you install has to keep working indefinitely, not until a subscription check fails.

In Doconut

Licensing resolves a local .lic file through options.LicensePath or Viewer.DoconutLicense(path). There is no activation call and no runtime revalidation, so rendering, conversion and licensing all work with no outbound connectivity. Archive the DLLs alongside the licence — a licence is tied to a version range.

See how it works in practice

Definitions only carry you so far. A temporary licence runs on your own machine, against your own documents.