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InstallShield AdminStudio Professional 5.5  by Bob Kelly	Page 2 of 5 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

 
Repackager

The first thing you will notice when digging into AdminStudio 5.5 is a simplified “web-like” interface which helps you to easily choose what tasks you wish to perform (figure A). These screens, which vary with the launch of each product, provide a nice starting point where you will be confident you are using the right tool for the job. When repackaging, you may choose to monitor a setup and track any changes it performs (InstallMonitor) or you may use the more familiar approach of comparing snapshots before and after an installation takes place.

Despite InstallShield’s recommendation that you make use of its InstallMonitor feature, the default method selected in AdminStudio is to perform a snapshot comparison. InstallMonitor does require administrative privileges and Windows NT, 2000 or XP, but these are reasonable requirements that most users will not have a problem with (at least when it comes to Windows Installer repackaging environments). During the final scan of the snapshot process, while performing the system comparison and assembling the results, the files needed for the project are also copied to the project folder. When done, the InstallShield Repackager launches.

Wait, wasn’t that the repackager? Not quite. This Wizard we just walked through is referred to as the “Setup Intent” scan- the first step in building your package. The InstallShield Repackager has now evolved into more than the repackaging wizard alone. You may now browse the files, folders, registry entries and shortcuts captured in your package and those items that have been excluded from your package in an easy-to-work-with interface. Most repackaging products offer you an opportunity to review what has been captured and excluded, where you may make changes based on what you see. However, this is traditionally presented using one or two dialog boxes in a listview format. This limitation often urges users to simply accept anything included, take a quick look at what has been excluded, and then go to the MSI editor to do any real package cleaning. The InstallShield repackager provides this functionality in a more manageable tree view format and when you are done you may create the MSI package directly without the need to open and compile a project file within the MSI editor (DevStudio). Several build options are available such as “Display only the Welcome dialog during installation”, “Replace files with merge modules whenever possible” and “Build a compressed, single-file package that contains all of the files.” Unless you have some tweaking to do, this could very well be the final step in your package build process (you still have QA and testing tasks to perform!)

Note: One thing that always bothered me about earlier releases was the trouble I had reading any warnings or errors in the scrolling output panel at the bottom of the AdminStudio display. In this release, a hyperlink to a log file is presented at the end of the results so you can easily read any such messages in notepad.
 

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