miabuild.exe changes cmd.exe background colour

[NickDay]

A few months ago, one of my colleagues reported the following problem, but I could not reproduce it.
Now, in a different batch script and installer, it's started happening to me. InstallAware 11 on Windows 7.

I have a bat script which prepares a folder of items to be installed and then builds the installer, calling:
miabuild.exe "InstallerProject\myfoldername\myproject.mpr" >>IABuild.rpt

The installer takes about a minute to build. Every time I build, about five seconds after entering miabuild.exe, the cmd.exe window changes. Initially it was the default white text on a black background, but miabuild.exe seems to be changing it to white text on a 'transparent' background. By 'transparent', I really mean that it's very light grey (so it's hard to read the text) with diagonal Windows 7 style 'reflection' stripes, right across the whole window. When miabuild.exe returns, the cmd.exe window background changes back to black.

I think we can live with this so don't waste much time investigating. But I'd be interested to know the cause and whether there's a fix.

- Nick

[bokkie]

Nick, a couple of us also noticed that and queried it. It's apparently by "design" and can neither be changed or disabled. I think it's to promote the "glass" concept?

I'd rather the development effort had given me a new ribbon button to delete all breakpoints instead. Something to enhance the IDE.

[NickDay]

Thanks Bokkie,
Whoever tested it maybe did not try it with a cmd window with default white text on black background.
Nick

[giaviv]

Nick,

This is indeed as designed - see this for details:
http://www.installaware.com/forum/viewt ... f=2&t=6760

[NickDay]

Unbelievable.

[NickDay]

Just to add: if the idea is to show that the cmd window is busy building an installer, it would be preferable to temporarily change the background colour, e.g. to red.

Using a 'transparent' background colour (nearly white) means that the existing white text in the window, including any error messages which might have occurred just before building the installer, cannot be read and might be overlooked.