Is it possible to produce an iso image with AI, or if not can you suggest a way that I can build one. I'm looking at an initial installer that could run to several hundreds of mb's and a target user base who may not have acces to particulary good or fast internet connections. I'd like (as well as standard installers (and installers that will allow people to download pre-requisites on the fly) to be able to offere the oportunity for people to download an ISO image of the full install complete with all the pre-requisites that they can then create an installation cd from. Apart from anything else a lot of people still feel happier if they have a physical copy of a program's installation files.
I'd welcome any suggestions that you can offer.
Dom
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Re: Iso image
Hi Dom,
I am afraid that Advanced Installer doesn't support authoring an .ISO image of your project since it is an MSI package authoring tool.
You can create your project, build it in a format you think is right and after that you can create an ISO file with a dedicated software that does that.
For choosing how to build your project, you may go to the "Configuration" tab, in the "Builds" page, under the "Project Definition" tree.
Best regards,
cyb
I am afraid that Advanced Installer doesn't support authoring an .ISO image of your project since it is an MSI package authoring tool.
You can create your project, build it in a format you think is right and after that you can create an ISO file with a dedicated software that does that.
For choosing how to build your project, you may go to the "Configuration" tab, in the "Builds" page, under the "Project Definition" tree.
Best regards,
cyb
Re: Iso image
I create ISO images using a windows port of the mkisofs tool ported from windows. Then I use cdrecord to write the physical media. Both are done in batch mode. When the image is created I use md5sum to create a checksum so that anyone downloading the large ISO can verify integrity.
Each build (often several per day) of the product creates a wrapper exe (by PackageForTheWeb - oldie from InstallShield). The wrapper contains: bootstrapper, ini file and msi/cab. I do this way for easy bypass of prerequisites if necessary during development. Each wrapper is published to an internal website where is may be downloaded by SQA, which can anywhere in the world.
When a build is accepted for release candidate, I unwrap the internal published build and place it in a virtual CD folder (along with other stuff - like prerequisites). I DO NOT package the pre-requisites with each build because this can add huge overhead which is repetitive from build to build.
After creating the ISO image, as above, I use the Daemon Tools to mount the ISO as a Virtual CD. The ISO image then gets published as a Release Candidate for checking by SQA. A release candidate is published in a subfolder: RC1, RC2 etc. When a Release Candidate is accepted, it gets "promoted" to the root folder above.
Hope this helps someone.
Each build (often several per day) of the product creates a wrapper exe (by PackageForTheWeb - oldie from InstallShield). The wrapper contains: bootstrapper, ini file and msi/cab. I do this way for easy bypass of prerequisites if necessary during development. Each wrapper is published to an internal website where is may be downloaded by SQA, which can anywhere in the world.
When a build is accepted for release candidate, I unwrap the internal published build and place it in a virtual CD folder (along with other stuff - like prerequisites). I DO NOT package the pre-requisites with each build because this can add huge overhead which is repetitive from build to build.
After creating the ISO image, as above, I use the Daemon Tools to mount the ISO as a Virtual CD. The ISO image then gets published as a Release Candidate for checking by SQA. A release candidate is published in a subfolder: RC1, RC2 etc. When a Release Candidate is accepted, it gets "promoted" to the root folder above.
Hope this helps someone.