Update Prerequisites automatically

[cli]

We would like to propose an update to the Advanced Installer package. To give you a little background, we have been moving all of our applications to use Advanced Installer. We have our flagship product, but we also have upwards of thirty different little applications. Most of the time, these applications share the same prerequisites. If a change is made to one of the more common prerequisites, then we have to update all thirty install files (change the url, change the conditions, and change the MD5/Size values). This gets to be a daunting task.

In a nutshell, we would like to propose two enhancements. We would like the ability to add a prerequisite definition from an external file, instead of maintaining them in the editor. And we would like the ability to declare that an install is to be used as a prerequisite.

In the first enhancement, the external file could be “side by side” with the prerequisite that we browse to now in order to get the size and MD5. So, maybe if that file had a .aip.pre extension or something, you could save a reference to that file in the .aip, and when building, use some of its info (like the URL and conditionals), and grab the .md5 and size from the matching .exe or .msi. Or just put that stuff right into the .aip.pre file. Doesn’t matter much.

An alternative to doing this in the UI would be to provide command line support for “UpdatePrerequisite”. If we could update the URL, update the MD5 stuff, and update the conditional from the command line, we could automate the process.

If you implemented the first enhancement with the .pre referencing the matching built item, the second enhancement would not be necessary. But we would like to see it implemented. There would be some mechanism in the install editor to indicate that the install is building a prerequisite component, and that would cause the .aip.pre file to be created, with all of the required info populated.

With these two changes, an automated build process can create the updated prerequisite installs, and then create the client installs automatically. This would be a huge help.

We are willing to fund these enhancements if you would consider making them directly to AdvancedInstaller. Or we are willing to fund the development of a stand-alone tool to accomplish this same thing if someone outside of Cayphon were interested in the task. Our guys can do the external tool… but their plates are full. We are going to assign it to them, though, unless there is a chance of getting it from you.


Thanks,

[Cosmin]

Hi,

I added this improvement on our TODO list and it will be available in a future version. Thank you for your suggestion.

Until then a solution is to create a custom script or application which works like this:
- one developer adds a prerequisite from the repository, modifies something and then saves the project
- he runs the script
- the script (application) can check the project against the prerequisite in the repository
- if the prerequisite settings were modified, it can update the prerequisite from the repository

Both the project and repository prerequisite files are XML, so it should be easy to parse and modify them.

Regards,
Cosmin

[cli]

Cosmin,

Can you explain what you mean by the "repository"? Is this something special or just the source code repository.

Thanks,
Clint

[Cosmin]

Hi Clint,

Advanced Installer has a prerequisite repository in which you can export prerequisites. This way you can configure a prerequisite once and then use it in multiple projects. In the "Software Prerequisites" tab of the "Prerequisites" page you can use the "Move To Repository" and "Add From Repository" context menu items.

This feature is available starting with Advanced Installer 6.6.

Regards,
Cosmin