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Adding custom pre-requisites and their external installers

Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 4:00 pm
by keith
Hello,

I'm evaluating IA and am seeing if it can replace our current install solution. Our app requires some runtimes not directly supported by IA, so I want to know what is the best way to do the following:

1) Check for the existence of the runtime
2) If it doesn't exist, append it to the prereq's list in the prereq dialog, then install it using an installer in SUPPORTFILES

I figured out how to do #1 (added a script, checked for the existence of a file, set the right variables including prereq, etc.) but i had a hard time adding it to the Include Script section. All I could do was replace an existing script, so I had to add an unneeded one then change it.

I assume I just need to add another script for the installing of my prereq, but I can't figure out how to get it into the Install Prerequisites section, since you can't just add a newline and type in "Include Script: <scriptname>" (which seems like a serious shortcoming, BTW, but I'm new to IA).

What might this setup script look like, where should it go and how do I get it there? Am I going about this all wrong?

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Keith

Re: Adding custom pre-requisites and their external installe

Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 4:40 pm
by keith
OK,

I think I figured it all out. Highlighting a line and just typing to insert a line above it wasn't very intuitive to me but I get it now.

Even so, does anyone have suggestions on best practices for this kind of thing? I seems like there might be several ways to accomplish this.

Thanks!

Keith

Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 6:27 pm
by CandiceJones
Hi Keith!

Check out this whitepaper:
http://www.installaware.com/installawar ... s_view.pdf

It covers your question in quite a bit of detail!

Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 6:43 pm
by keith
Thanks for the info, Candice. I'l take a look.

Keith