I seem to have received the privilege of picking up some install shield projects. I've used install anywhere in the past and I was wondering if there was an equivalent of speedfolder in installshield. A speedfolder is a way of blindly copying an entire folder into the project without explicitly selecting each file.
There are a couple of ways you can do this.
Dynamic File Linking or using the Files and Folders view.
With Dynamic File linking you can point your project to a directory or directories and IS will refresh the list of files at build time and add them to your install.
The files and folder view can be used to drag and drop a whole load of files and folders in to your project in one go.
If you choose to use Dynamic File Linking be sure to read up on the implications first. Check out the Installshield help file
Related
I have a Visual C++ for Linux project in VS2017 that I'm building on a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian. This project consists of a single source file (main.c) and an image (test.jpg). When building the project, I want the image file to also be deployed to the pi, so that the code in main.c can do something with it locally. However, I can't figure out how to do this
The image file's Content property is set to True, as is Included in Project. In the project properties, under Copy Sources, Sources to Copy is set to "#(SourcesToCopyRemotely)" and Copy Sources is set to "Yes". However, when I build, only main.c is copied to the Pi, and the compiler output is just a single .out file. I hoped to also see test.jpg there, but alas.
This article mentions that #(SourcesToCopyRemotely) defaults to all files in the project. However, when I evaluate the value of #(SourcesToCopyRemotely, it evaluates to just "main.c".
How do I make sure content files in my projects also end up in the build directory, along with the .out file? Preferably without having to manually enter each filename in a post-build step.
It turns out this is a bug in VC++ for Linux. A workaround, currently, is to use Additional Sources to copy. There's a caveat though: it doesn't work with remote paths that start with ~. So you can't use $(RemoteRootDir) if the Remote Build Root Directory setting is set to the default of "~/projects".
I've currently got Remote Build Root Directory set to "/home/pi/projects" and for each file I want to copy to the build directory I set Additional Sources to Copy to "[filename]:=$(RemoteRootDir)/$(ProjectName)/bin/$(Platform)/$Configuration)/[filename]". For instance:
firstimage.png:=$(RemoteRootDir)/$(ProjectName)/bin/$(Platform)/$(Configuration)/firstimage.png;secondimage.png:=$(RemoteRootDir)/$(ProjectName)/bin/$(Platform)/$(Configuration)/secondimage.png
Right-clicking on the non-source code file to open it's properties page and flagging as Content in the General tab will cause the file to be copied to the remote. There is no need to add anything to the Copy Sources tab. The Copy Sources page of the project properties must show the default of #(SourcesToCopyRemotely). And when you edit this setting the macro should show an expansion with the additional files included.
I have found that it necessary to refresh the macro by clearing Source to Copy and then restoring it to the default after you have marked the additional files as content.
I have encountered problems when the additional files are not in the same folder as the C++ source files on the Windows host and/or you want to put them somewhere else on the remote. There are several open issues on the VCLinux GitHub site like this one so it will be worth reporting any problems you have on there.
[VCLinux 1.0.6 on VS Pro 2017 + Debian Jessie remote]
The "Pre-Build Event" section of the project properties offers "Additional Files To Copy". Addressing my file there (relative to the solution) showed following in the output when building:
Copying file 'C:\myfilepath\resource.png' to '/home/pi/projects/myproject/resource.png'
It is possible to move the files to the final destination then with Remote Post-Build Events (mv source destination). Not the most elegant way, but the first thing I got working..
we actually build an InstallShield project for our application with the functionality to include files dynamic into a component. All files will be taken which are in a specific place.
Because of problems, which are not part of this question, we want to change this to components where we add files explicit to custom separated components.
The question is, is there a best practice for this? We have the small fear that we easily can forget to add files to the component we new created. These can be dll files, .config files, pdfs or just xml.
(We build the installer every night using TFS.)
We found a solution for the problem.
What we wanted to solve:
During the build we want to be informed if files got removed
During the build we want to be informed if new files are missing
we solved this by two more or less easy things.
1. Information if a file is removed
This is easy sone, we have all files added explicitly, each single file is an own component now, if one file is missing the whole project does not build with the exact error message.
2. Information for missing files
For this we wrote a small tool which runs by a prebuild event of the installshield project.
There it opens the *.ism file as an xml file and searches for the "Files" table.
Than it takes all files from the drop folder and looks if all files are in there.
If there are files missing but we don't expect them, like pdb files or test dlls, we have an additional text file we just called "IgnoreList".
The tool skips these files by the check.
Now we are on a very good state to get informed directly on the next morning if the project was able to build or not, and if not what happened, so we can be sure that in the final target application are files are there :-)
I am a first time user of this group and so pardon me for any mistakes and unclear statements.
What I am trying to do is to create single setup.exe (not msi) using installshield. But when I build the project what I get is other files along with the .exe file for e.g. .cab, .hdr, .inx and other such files.
I am using the options under Release -> Release Wizard -> General options-> Checked the "Create a single file executable" & "Compress compiled script" options but still I get the extra files along with the setup.exe file. I want a setup.exe file to be created independent of the other local files.
So could anyone suggest me how to achieve that.
Any help will be appriciated.
Thanks.
As Michael Urman wrote, you will find the one file in adjacent folder.
The folder name is "Package".
Those files are always created for InstallScript projects. When you build a single file executable, the single file version that packages it all together is available in an adjacent folder.
(I'm new to CMake and I am not so familiar with Visual Studio.)
I need to implement a relatively big library the solution/project files will be generated by CMake, and my problem is that I would like the organization of the files in VC GUI to reflect the directory structure on the disk.
Basically, the library is split into different parts. For instance one of them is called "common" and will implement some headers used by the library. On the disk it will be in a specific "common" directory, which may have one or more subdirectory.
src/
common/
...
portfolio/
...
asset/
contracts/
physical_assets/
...
mathutils/
...
I'd like to have the see the same thing within Visual Studio's Solution Explorer,
but I only know how to split the solution into different projects.
How can I do that?
You can do that using SOURCE_GROUP, the CMake FAQ covers that.
I don't think you can. If you use "Show All Files" you will get what you want, but only at the project level. Creating a VS project at the root may give you the possiblity of viewing all your files, but you will still need separate projects for each exe/dll/etc. you want to build. Remember that a solution in VS terms is a set of projects, not a directory tree.
Not sure if this is what you're after, but: first make sure you have "Tools->Options->Projects and Solutions->Solution Explorer Mode" set to "Show All Files". Then if you create a VS project in the root source directory (probably the same as where your CMakeLists.txt goes), VS will show all files in that directory and all it's subirectories.
Right now the Release build just makes the files necessary for the install. But I want to create the CD structure automatically with InstallShield, so that when I go to Tools, Open Release Folder
it has
\Install
\Tools
\Help
autorun.inf
I've looked at the execute batch file or copy to folder options for a Release, I was hoping there was something more friendly within InstallShield.
using version 12.
I created a feature / component called CDOnly which is not visible, selected, and doesn't copy, but does put the files in the Disk Images / Disk1 folder.
So by changing the default directories of features and putting special things in CDOnly I was able to create the structure I wanted.