InstallAware

I just installed a clean full install of IA 8 Studio. I then anted to remove the Visual Studio integration so I went to ARP "change" for IA.

Then it comes up with some prompt called "Please locate your original setup sources to continue operation".

No matter what folder I browse to, it does not work.

Is this a known bug with the IA setup program? Does this same issue affect installers created with IA?

Jay

No, this behavior is as documented. Read the section in online help on patch source resolution, the same considerations apply.

I must be missing something. I read the section "Patch Source Resolution". It says for "Source Resolution for Compressed Builds" (I assume the InstallAware_8_With_Runtimes.exe is compressed), that

"the user will need to run the self extracting .EXE file that comprises the compressed build. When this file is running, as part of the setup initialization routine, it will extract its contents to a subfolder of the system temporary folder. The user will have to navigate into the system temporary folder, determine which subfolder contains the setup sources (by trial and error if necessary), and choose that in the source media browser."

Does this mean that to change settings after installing IA 8, this process needs to be followed? Is this how users of IA 8 are supposed to write their install programs as well?

Or, just run the compressed setup.exe file!

I installed RAD Studio after InstallAware, if there is integrated support it would be nice to add it in. Do I/Can I re-install or will that muck up my registration?

Or can I run the installer and 'add features' - it seems other are having trouble.

VS 2008 Integration is there.

There's no RAD Studio integration.

MichaelNesmith wrote:Or, just run the compressed setup.exe file!

Something just seems "broke". If I run the original installer (to simply remove 1 option), then I must run the separate "licened patcher" afterwards to make the installer not look like a trial (I am a new registered user).

I just can't believe that it is so difficult to change options using the installer. I would have assumed that the installer for IA would be a good "template" for how we should write installers, but there is just no way I could get away with putting end users through that (support calls about this would swamp our tech support dept). I guess the best approach for installers using IA is to remove the "Change" features from ARP since there is no built-in way to do this in an acceptible way for the end users

Of course there is. Do your research before blaming the product - we do not tolerate that kind of attitude in these official InstallAware forums.

For the record, web builds always cache their data. Before you rant on about how you do not want to deploy anything online, read the forums and find out how you can make offline web builds. It's been answered here multiple times before!

MichaelNesmith wrote:Of course there is. Do your research before blaming the product - we do not tolerate that kind of attitude in these official InstallAware forums.

For the record, web builds always cache their data. Before you rant on about how you do not want to deploy anything online, read the forums and find out how you can make offline web builds. It's been answered here multiple times before!

Easy Michael I appologize if you think this is a bad attitude or a rant ... that is not my intent. IA is a great product so far ... and I have done A LOT of research about this.

But our requirements (and yours too apparently since IA 8 is distributed this way), are that we use a single compressed install .EXE. This is ONLY about the single .EXE deployment mode.

I am just a little puzzled that when this deployment model is chosen, that the ARP "Change" feature option does not "work as I would expect". I guess I would expect it to be able to work without having the user manually "unzip" the install program into a folder.

That is why I asked the original question. I can understand needing to find the original source, but I guess I wanted to confirm that IA 8 does not automatically "unzip" the single compressed EXE. But I do not think that it is a rant when I recommend that the "Change" feature be removed for installers that use the EXE model. As a customer, I found it very frustrating that the IA 8 installer behaved this way, and I am sure our end users would complain very loudly if we sent out an install program that behaved that way.

Again, great product! The MSIcode is an essential part of our installers, and I can't see how people manage without it.

If you would like the change option to work the way you are wanting it to do a web build. When you do this though on the MSI screen comment out all of the [Web Media] blocks.

After this is done add a blank web media block at the top of your MSI code. This will be an "Offline" web media block. Once all of this is done the web build will be act like the single file install except for the fact that it caches it files locally.

I believe this is in the help.

With that said I do believe it would be a major improvement of Installaware if all install modes had the option to cache file locally. After all how many time do you have to put a cd back in the drive to uninstall a program. Not many in my experience.

I love the product but this has been a major head ache for me as we send out CDs to customers and I have to put a web build on the CD so that the setup will be caches locally. This causes the install to be much slower than it would be if I could do an uncompressed build.