InstallAware

I see some basic assistance here..

We have our own runtimes that are not currently available web media blocks provided by IA 6.

Our "thought" was that we could create a new project, add the DLL files to the project where they should be installed, set it up for a Web Compressed EXE, and build the project. Since there's a web media block automatically created for the project, and it's included, we figured it would create two outputs - (1) the setup exe, and (2) the .7zip file representing that web media block that we could use to bundle in other projects in the future.

That didn't happen - we tried to extract a .7zip file from that exe, but the decompressor did nothing.

So apparently we're having some challenges understanding how to do this with IA.

We want very thin web installs.
We want the setup exe to really only include our executable program.
We want all other support dlls to be optionally downloaded and installed via the web, including our own custom sets of dll "runtimes".
Our assumption is that we can create our own custom web media blocks that contain only our dlls - but we can't figure out how to build them, and get that to work.

Are web media blocks nothing more than a compressed .7zip?
Can IA 6, from the menus, create this for us, or do we have to run something else?

We need some general assistance here - since apparently we don't quite understand the relationship of the Web build process, why there's a default web media block created in the first place if it isn't generated to a .7zip file, the relationship of web media blocks to .7zip files, how to create a .7zip file if we need to do it manually, and how to finally put our own .7zip files in the IA system so they can be selected as custom web media blocks in the future.

Any direction would be greatly appreciated. I wouldn't think this is too difficult a concept, but apparently we have to write some script to get this functionality.

We've read about everything we can on the forum and in the docs, but we're not MSI script developers.

First, What application runtimes are you installing? The reason I ask is that someone else may have already extended the Applications Run Times to include those you are looking.

Second, if you explore the script created by the wizard you will see that it automatically places Application Runtimes that you have selected into Web Media Blocks and when you build the project each Web Media Block is compressed into a 7zip file.

You can dowload 7zip from http://www.7-zip.org.

You can build your own 7zip files and use the Extract 7zip Archive command to unzip them.

Hope this helps!

We have our own runtimes that are not currently available web media blocks provided by IA 6.

Runtimes and web media blocks are not the same thing. A web media block is any collection of files in your setup, be they for installing runtimes, assemblies, files, DLLs, execute plug-in actions, or whichever.

Since there's a web media block automatically created for the project, and it's included, we figured it would create two outputs - (1) the setup exe, and (2) the .7zip file representing that web media block that we could use to bundle in other projects in the future.

The web media block file will only be created if it actually contains any files. If you don't put any files inside the web media block, nothing is in it, and it won't be built. Also, web media blocks can be skipped while building to save time, especially for tedious blocks like application runtimes, which will not change once you have built them.

When adding files in the visual view, if you select a feature instead of the generic "Feature Independent" selection, your files will be added to that feature - and as a side effect, the web media block associated with that feature.

OR

To have full fine-grain control over your web media blocks, switch to MSIcode, and look for the [OFFLINE CONTENT] or [Web Media Block] directives. Anything that comes after the former is put inside your main setup.exe; anything that comes after an actual block is put inside the .7zip file for dynamic download at runtime. You can mix and match as many directives as you like in the script, giving you full freedom over how you distribute your setup into online and offline parts.

We want all other support dlls to be optionally downloaded and installed via the web, including our own custom sets of dll "runtimes".

If these are temporary DLL files that you are not installing to the target system, use the File Bag command (placed inside a Web Media Block, of course) to bundle them with your setup. In this way, they will be downloaded only when needed, and removed after setup quits, freeing space on the target system.

Are web media blocks nothing more than a compressed .7zip?

Yes and no. InstallAware automatically downloads web media blocks for you when code inside a web media block that requires access to source media executes (ex: a Create Shortcut command inside a weblock will not trigger a download, whereas an Install Files or File Bag command will trigger a download). So, web media blocks are part of not only your distribution media, but also setup logic and execution flow. And they are automatically ignored with non-web build types. So, the 7zip files can be thought of being as just the "media" for storing the weblocks.

Can IA 6, from the menus, create this for us, or do we have to run something else?

Of course! Use the Visual or MSIcode segments of the IDE.