Building the Installation

When the content and organization of your installation package are complete, build and test it.

To build, choose Build > Build Installation. The Build Installation wizard is launched and prompts you for the following information:

• Installation type: interactive or file tree

  See Installation Type for more information.

• Platform for which to build the installation package

  Choose one from the list. Build a separate package for every platform.

• Installation screen text

  See Installation Screen Display Text for more information.

• The target directory in which to build the installation

  This can be any directory. By default it is the project\install directory.

• List of BladePack project.prd files to include in the installation package

  You can bundle more than one project in a single installation.

Installation Type

BladePack creates a directory structure in the target directory and copies files into the tree. When you build an interactive installation package for Windows, BladePack calls InstallShield to process the files and create CD-ROM and diskette images.

When you build a file tree installation, BladePack creates the file tree specified in the project in the target directory. A file tree build is useful for debugging the BladePack project.

When you build the installation package with BladePack, you specify a staging directory to hold the installation files. By default, the staging directory is the project\install\InstallShield5.1\project directory. In addition to putting the Setup.exe file in the staging directory, BladePack also puts it in the project\install\cdrom directory.

BladePack creates the InstallShield 5.1 project file, project.ipr, in the staging directory. To open the project file in InstallShield 5.1, double-click it.

After you successfully build an interactive installation, the staging directory contains the subdirectories described in the following table.

Directory

Description

cdrom

Contains an image of the installation package that can be transferred to distribution media. DataBlade module developers can rename this directory to the name of the DataBlade module before creating a .tar file.

This directory contains Setup.exe and other files that support an InstallShield installation.

Component Definitions

Contains the component definitions. The Default.cdf file contains the component-to-subcomponent relationships.

File Groups

Contains all files to be installed. The component.fgl file describes which files are in which components and subcomponents.

Media

Contains directories for each media configuration you specify. The Default.mda file describes where to build the media files.

Registry Entries

Contains the Default.rge file, which describes the registry entries created in the installation process. Registry entries are associated with components.

Script Files

Contains custom setup files and the setup.rul custom setup script.

Setup Files

Not currently used by BladePack.

Shell Objects

Contains icons registered during installation.

String Tables\0009-English

Contains custom installation screen strings in the value.shl file.

Text Substitutions

Not currently used by BladePack.

Installation Screen Display Text

BladePack provides default text strings for the InstallShield installation wizard screens for Windows. You can override some of these text strings. For example, in the Select Installation Type wizard, you can change the text that appears next to the words Typical, Compact, and Custom to provide your own definitions for these three types of installations. When you save a BladePack project, BladePack saves any new string definitions in the appropriate string files.