To check whether your definition actually produces the desired results, please go to the View Results tab of the Files steps.
The default root of the distribution tree is labeled as "Installation directory" and
has a special icon. This
is the directory where your application will be installed on the target system. The directory
is dependent on user actions at the time of installation. In regular installers
a user can select an arbitrary directory where the application should be installed. For RPM
media files, a user can override the default directory with command line parameters. For
archives, the files are simply extracted into a commmon top-level directory.
The installation directory will only be created if you execute an "Install files" action in the list of actions. By default, the "Install files" action is placed on the "Installation" screen. If your installer should not create an installation directory, you can ignore this root and remove the "Install files" action.
To learn more on the various installer modes, please see the corresponding help topic.
If you build installers for different platforms, that root is likely to be different for each platform. In that case, you can use a compiler variable for the name of the custom root and override its value for each media file.
The most common case would be to add a "Directory selection" screen to the list of screens and set its variable name property to the variable that you've used as the name of the custom root. For the above example, that would be "rootDir" (without the ${installer:...} variable syntax).
Alternatively, you could use a "Set a variable" action to determine the location programmatically.
If a custom installation root is not bound at runtime or if it points to an invalid directory, the contained files will not be installed. There will be no error messages, if you require error handling, you can use a "Run a script" action before the "Install files" action with the appropriate error message and failure strategy.
Note: For archive media file types, custom installation roots are not installed. If you require these custom roots for your installation, you cannot use archives.
An alternative way to redirect installed files to different directories is to use the "Directory resolver" property of the "Install files" actions. Also, the "File filter" property of that action can be used to conditionally install files. The use of these properties is only recommended if you require their full flexibility. Otherwise, using custom installation roots and installation components is a better approach.
Enter
. To configure further properties of the folder, you can
edit the folder node (see below) to show the
folder property dialog.
DEL
key or using the corresponding
tool bar button or menu entry.
ENTER
key while the entry is selected.
Editing an entry means different things for different entry types:
To rename a folder, choose Rename entry from the context sensitive menu or Files->Rename entry from install4j's main menu. The name of the folder can then be edited in-place.