Can I make AI download pre-requisites at build time?

[jmoleary]

My nightly build uses AI and runs in an Azure DevOps pipeline. Right now, whenever I decide I want a pre-requisite (e.g. .NET 6.0) and I check it, AI downloads the pre-requisite's MSI file right there and then.

If that downloaded MSI is not present at build time, then the build simply fails. This forces me to add an entire MSI installer to my "ThirdParty" Git Repo every time I want to get the latest version. Since I try to keep my installer up to date with the latest version of my pre-requisites, I end up with lots of big
binaries stored there. I do not want to do that.

What I would like to happen is to make AI be a bit smarter about that. If AI has a pre-requisite and the file is not available at build time, I want AI to try to download it then, as it does when I manually check the button. Since AI already knows how to download all the items for which it has checkboxes, this seems like it should be possible.

Is there a way to do this?

(Note many of my customers do not have internet connections so I cannot just provide them with a link. I must have the MSI in the installer itself)

[Catalin]

Hello,

I'm afraid that currently we do not have support for your request. The only command line option for prerequisite is the "/NewPrerequisite" one, which does not have a switch for deciding whether you want or not to downloade the prerequisite.

New Prerequisite Option

I have added this on our TODO list of improvements and hopefully this will be implemented in a future version of Advanced Installer.

Best regards,
Catalin

[jmoleary]

Excellent, thank you!

[Catalin]

You are always welcome!

Best regards,
Catalin