Launch file from package

The following article uses options that are available starting with the Professional edition and project type.

It is common to encounter situations where you need to launch a file from the package during the installation or uninstallation process. Whether the file is an .EXE, .BAT, or any other file type, these samples will provide all the necessary steps.

In the current sample, we will demonstrate how to configure the setup package to launch a file during both the installation and uninstallation processes.

• 1. Create project
• 2. Enter product details
• 3. Add files and folders to your project
• 4. Configure custom action
  • 4.1 Launch regular file
  • 4.2 Launch temporary file
• 5. Build and install

1. Create project

After launching Advanced Installer, you will be presented with a dialog where you can choose the type of the project you want to create.

Select Professional and press the Create Project button. The new project has been created and from now on you will edit it.

Save the project and give it an appropriate name - let's say "Launch File Sample" for this example.

2. Enter product details

Now you can see the main view split into two panes. In the left pane, you can see all the options you have to edit in your current project, grouped in categories.

Switch to “Product Details” page to set the information seen by the user for your installation package. Fill the fields in the right pane with the corresponding data.

The information from this view will be displayed in the Control Panel.

3. Add files and folders to your project

The next step is to add to the project the files and/or folders that compose your application.

Select “Files and Folders” from the “Resources” menu on the left pane.

Click on the [ Add Files ] toolbar button and select the files of your application, or use the drag-and-drop to add resources from the disk to the project. In our case, the EXE file is a text editor which will be launched during the install process.

Let's assume that we also need to launch a file that should not be installed on the end-user machine e.g. that file is only required to be launched during the installation.

For this scenario, you can add that file as a temporary file.

Temporary files also allows us to launch a file earlier during the install proces, before files are actually copied on the target machine. This is happening because Temporary Files are copied between the CostFinalize and MigrateFeatureStates standard actions, at the beginning of the setup and removed during the InstallFinalize standard action.

In order to easily recognize them they have the following icon:

Use the [ Add Temporary Files ] toolbar button, the “Add Temporary Files...” tree/list context menu item. You can add more than one file at a time. If a file with the same name already exists in the target directory, the file to be added is skipped.

Here's how the file looks like in the project after it was added as temporary file:

Once you’ve added the files of your application in the Files and Folders view, we we can configure the setup to launch the files from the package.

4. Configure custom action

To launch a file during the installation, you can use a custom action. Switch to the Custom Actions view to configure the custom actions that will launch files during installation.

5. Build and install

When running the current sample, a .txt file will automatically launch immediately after the installation begins, even before any dialog appears.

Once the installation continues, there will be another file launched, the Text Editor. The same Text Editor will be launched when removing the setup from Control Panel.