Installer - Configuring Applications

## Installer - Configuring Applications |

| Applications are configured on the screens & and actions tab.

| The top-level nodes represent the different applications that can be configured for the project. There are 3 types of applications: Installer The installer is the application that is executed when the media file is invoked by the user, for example, when the user double-clicks on the installer executable in the Windows explorer. The installer cannot be deleted from the tree of installer elements. Uninstaller The uninstaller is a special application for uninstalling an installation. It is used in various contexts: Directly invoked by the user Invoked from the Windows software registry Invoked by the "Uninstall previous installation" action The uninstaller cannot be deleted from the tree of installer elements. If you do not wish to generate an uninstaller, you can disable it. Custom installer application You can add any number of custom installer applications that can be invoked after the installation. install4j comes with several templates for auto-updaters. Custom applications can also be used for writing maintenance applications for your installation. You can add new custom installer application by clicking on the [Add] button on the right side of the list and choosing `Add Application` from the popup. The application templates dialog will be displayed and lets you choose a starting point for your custom installer application. Application templates are entirely made up of existing screens, actions and form components. You can modify the selected application template after adding it. Unlike the installer and uninstaller above, custom applications are also created for archive media files. Please see the help topic on screens and actions for more information on how to create first-run installers for archives.

| Each installer application has a startup sequence of actions. Those actions are executed before the installer application presents a user interface. If any of these actions fails and has a "Quit on failure" failure strategy, the installer application will not be shown.

| Common properties for installer applications are: VM Parameters If you need to pass special VM parameters to the installer application, you can enter them here. A common case would be to raise the maximum heap size with a different -Xmx parameter if your installers require a lot of memory. Custom image for title bar You can optionally choose a different image for the top right corner of the installer wizard. This image will be visible for all screens. The recommended size is 60x60 pixels. Window width Here you can set the initial width of the installer application window. A width of at least 500 is recommended. Window height Here you can set the initial height of the installer application window. A width of at least 500 is recommended. Resizeable By default, the installer application window is resizeable, if you would like a fixed window size you can uncheck this option. Add install4j watermark to installer screens By default, a watermark with the "install4j" product name is added to the divider that separates the navigation buttons on each screen of the installer application. You can optionally disable this watermark. Look and Feel init script An optional script to initialize the look and feel. If empty, the system look and feel will be set. Please note that the look and feel must be available added to the custom code if it is not already part of the JRE. Allow unattended mode By default, installers allow unattended installations. Please see the corresponding help topic on installer modes for more information. All standard actions and standard screens support unattended installations. If your policy forbids unattended installations or if you include custom code that cannot handle unattended installations, you can disable them by deselecting this property. Allow console installations By default, installers allow console installations. Please see the corresponding help topic on installer modes for more information. All standard actions and standard screens support console installations, form screens are also fully mapped to console installers. If your policy forbids console installations or if you include custom code that cannot handle console installations, you can disable them by deselecting this property. Fall back to console mode on Unix On Unix, users often operate in envirnoments where no X11 server is available and no GUI can be displayed. The installer will fallback to console mode if console mode execution is allowed and this option is selected. Otherwise an error message will be displayed that tells the user how to invoke the installer in console mode. Default execution mode By default, an installer application is execution in GUI mode. It is possible to change the default mode to console mode or unattended mode. Windows console executable If selected, a console executable will be created on Windows. A non-hideable console will be shown when the installer is double-clicked in the explorer. This improves the user experience for a console-only installer (default execution mode set to console) and allows execution through rsh.

| Special properties for the installer are: Suppress initial progress dialog On Windows, the installer displays a native progress dialog that informs the user that the installer is being prepared. You can suppress this dialog by deselecting this property. Create log file for stderr output If selected, and output on stderr is detected, an file named error.log will be created next to the installer and all output to stderr will be redirected to that file.

| Special properties for the uninstaller are: Executable name The name of the executable for the uninstaller. Please enter a name without any path components and without a file extension. By default, this property is set to "uninstall". Executable directory The directory to which the executable of the uninstaller will be written. If empty, it will be placed in the .install4j directory. By default, this property is set to ".".

| Special properties for custom installer applications are: Executable name The name of the executable for the custom installer application. Please enter a name without any path components and without a file extension. Executable directory The directory to which the executable of the custom installer application will be written. If empty, it will be placed in the .install4j directory. Change working directory If selected the working directory will be changed to the value in 'Working directory' at startup. Working directory The working directory to be used when 'Change working directory' is selected. Vista execution level The execution level for this application. If you want to modify files in the instalation direction, you most likely need administrator rights.

| If you would like to associate a custom icon with your installer application, select the "Custom Icon" tab in the configuration of the installer application. In the `Cross platform` section you then have to choose icon files in the PNG image format (extension `*.png`) in the sizes 16x16 and 32x32 pixels. On Microsoft Windows, the generated executable will have an icon with these images, on other platforms, these image files will be used for desktop integration. It is recommended to use 32-bit images with an alpha channel, 8 bit-palette images will be generated where required. Generated Windows icons contain traditional 256 color images and 32-bit images with an alpha channel ("Windows XP icons"). However, it is also possible to use 8 bit-palette images with a transparency color for the input image files. If you have an external icon file for Microsoft Windows, you can select the `Use ICO file` option in the `Windows` section and choose an icon file (extension `*.ico`) in the text field below. With the `Generate from PNG files` option, the icon will be generated as described in the `Cross platform` section. If you have an external icon file for Mac OS X, you can select the `Use ICNS file` in the `Mac OS X` section and choose a Mac OS X icon file (extension `*.icns`) in the text field below. With the `Use standard icon` option, a standard icon provided by install4j will be used. No Mac OS X icon is generated by install4j, since the ICNS format is undocumented. Mac OS X icons have to be generated on Mac OS X with the Icon Composer application located in `/Developer/Applications`. Note: If the project has already been saved, relative file paths will be interpreted as relative to the project file.