Working with Advanced Installer from the Command Line

The Advanced Installer command line allows you to create, build or edit projects without using the graphical interface.

Creating a new project

The new project command line syntax is:

[<path>\]AdvancedInstaller.com /newproject <project_file_path>
  { [-type <project_type>] [-lang <project_language>] }  

Parameters:

• <path>
• Path to Advanced Installer executable.
• <project_file_path>
• Path to project file. (e.g. "C:\Users\Caphyon\Desktop\Advanced Installer\project.aip")

• -type <project_type>
• Specify the project type.
  • <project_type>
  • The project type. The string can be either of the available project type names in Advanced Installer (e.g. "simple" for a Simple project type, "professional" for Professional, etc.).
• -lang <project_language>
• Specify the project language.
  • <project_language>
  • The project language (e.g. "en" for English, "ru" for Russian, etc.).
• -overwrite
• Include this parameter to silently overwrite any existing project with the same name from the specified location. If this parameter is not specified and a project with the same name already exists, an exception will be thrown.

Building from command line

In order to build a MSI from command line, you can use the following syntax:

[<path>\]AdvancedInstaller.com /build <project_file_path> 
  { [-buildslist <builds_list>] | [-configurationslist <configurations_list>] }

Parameters:

• <path>
• Path to Advanced Installer executable.
• <project_file_path>
• Path to project file.
• -buildslist <builds_list>
• Perform a set of builds. All builds are performed if no build is specified.
  • <builds_list>
  • list of builds that should be performed; build names should be separated by semicolon (";") characters
• -configurationslist <configurations_list>
• Build a set of configurations. For WinCE projects only. All configurations are build if no configuration is specified.
  • <configurations_list>
  • list of configurations to build; configuration names should be separated by semicolon (";") characters

Deprecated:

• -force
• This parameter has been deprecated. In order to perform a clean rebuild use the /rebuild command.

Performing a clean Rebuild

In order to build the project regardless whether the project was modified and without using any cached files, you can use the following syntax:

[<path>\]AdvancedInstaller.com /rebuild [project_file_path] 
  { [-buildslist <builds_list>] | [-configurationslist <configurations_list>] }

ANT integration

In order to include Advanced Installer in an ANT build you can add the following target to your build.xml file:

<target name="advinst">

<exec executable="[path]\AdvancedInstaller.com">
    <arg line="/build [project].aip"/>
  </exec>

</target>

Load Custom Path Variables

Load a list of Path variables to be further used by Advanced Installer.

[<path>\]AdvancedInstaller.com /loadpathvars <path_variables_file_path>

• <path_variables_file_path>
• Loads a new set of path variables from the specified file (XML file).

In order to create a XML file containing your custom path variables you must first create the path variables and use "Save To..." command available in Path Variables Editor.

Executing a file of commands

You can specify a text file containing a series of edit commands that will be executed in sequence.

In order to execute a file of commands you can use the following syntax:

AdvancedInstaller.com /execute <path_to_project_file> <command_file_path> [-nofail]

Parameters:

• <path_to_project_file>
• Path of the project to edit.
• <command_file_path>
• Path of the commands file.
• -nofail
• Display all the errors but do not interrupt the execution of the commands file.

When creating a file of commands there are some rules that must be taken into consideration:

• The first line of the file must be ;aic
• One of the following encodings must be used:
  • ANSI
  • Unicode

Apart from the usual edit commands, inside the commands file you can use the following command options:

To point the location for your files you can also use environment variables, using the separator “&“, like we use for the variable “SAMPLE“ in our example. If your environment variable contains a path with whitespaces then you should use quotes for the entire path.

Example:

;aic
SetVersion 1.2
AddFile APPDIR\MyFolder C:\Folder\File.txt
AddFile APPDIR\MyFolder “&SAMPLE&File.txt“
SetProperty TESTPROP="TestValue"
Save
Rebuild

Register Advanced Installer using the command line

To activate Advanced Installer you can use the following syntax:

AdvancedInstaller.com /register <license_id>

• <license_id>
• The license ID which you received after purchasing Advanced Installer.

To register with a floating license the syntax is:

AdvancedInstaller.com /registerfloating <host>:<port>

• <host>
• The license server host name.
• <port>
• The license server port number.

Optionally, with a floating license, you can use a proxy server to connect through. The syntax is:

AdvancedInstaller.com /cfglicensesrvproxy [-set <host>:<port>] | [-disable]

• -set <host>:<port>
• Set a proxy server to connect through.
  • <host>
  • The proxy server host name.
  • <port>
  • The proxy server port number.
• -disable
• Disable connecting through the proxy server.

Displaying the command line help

Use the following syntax to display the usage for the available command line options:

AdvancedInstaller.com { /help | /? } [<command>]

Topics

• Editing
  How to edit Advanced Installer projects with command line commands.