home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
W95 Shareware Collection
/
W95 Collection - Windows 95 Shareware (LCDCAN).iso
/
win95
/
utils
/
chief200
/
chief.faq
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1995-09-15
|
13KB
|
294 lines
CHIEF'S INSTALLER PRO: FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
-------------------------------------------------
THIS FAQ LIST CONTAINS A LOT OF VERY USEFUL INFORMATION, AND
CAN SAVE YOU A LOT OF TIME. PLEASE READ IT CAREFULLY!!!
AND, PLEASE READ this file BEFORE contacting me with any questions!!
^^^^^^ ^^^^^^
IT PROBABLY CONTAINS ANSWERS TO THOSE QUESTIONS YOU MIGHT WISH TO
ASK, AND TO THOSE WHICH YOU HAVEN'T EVEN THOUGHT OF!
[--------------------------- CHIEF'S FAQ LIST -----------------------]
1. Q: WHAT RESERVED WORDS (COMMANDS) DO I ACTUALLY *NEED* IN MY
WINSTALL.INF FILE?
A: Most of the commands in the INF file are optional. However, some
of them are essential. At the absolute minimum, you MUST have the
following;
$TITLE
$DISK1
$SPACE
$TARGET
2. Q: WHAT FILES IN THE CHIEF'S INSTALLER PRO PACKAGE ARE ABSOLUTELY
NECESSARY FOR AN INSTALLATION?
A: As with the commands, most of the files in the package are
optional. At the absolute minimum, you must have;
INSTALL.EXE
WINSTALL.INF
The installation will run perfectly well with these two files.
However, if you want the "banner" to be displayed, you must also
have WINSTALP.DLL. If you are using a language other than
English, you must have a copy of WINSTALL.DLL compiled with the
string resources translated to your language.
If you want to use $UNZIP (or the UNZIP command) then you must
have WINSTALZ.DLL.
If you want to change the default icon on the installer's dialog
boxes, then you also need WINSTALC.DLL.
If your program comes on more than 1 installation disk, then it
is advised to ask your users to run SETUP.EXE instead of
INSTALL.EXE. SETUP.EXE will call INSTALL.EXE at the right point,
and running it avoids a lot of potential problems.
3. Q: WHY DO I ALWAYS GET A DIALOG TELLING ME THAT THE INSTALLATION
IS NOT COMPLETE WHEN I KNOW THAT IT IS?
A: If indeed, all the files have been correctly installed:
The installer tries to match the figure in your $SPACE line with
the sizes of the files installed (to approximately 2% either way).
A substantial (more than 2%) discrepancy leads to this error
dialog. One solution is to make sure that your $SPACE information
is accurate, or to disable the end dialog by using the
$NO-END-DIALOG command, but the best solution is to make sure that
the figure specified in your $SPACE line is accurate.
Note that if you do not ensure the accuracy of your $SPACE line,
the progress "percent" meter will also not be accurate - and in
such cases, you SHOULD use $NO-END-DIALOG otherwise your users
will get a spurious error message which will confuse them into
thinking that the installation has failed.
The easiest way to calculate ALL your space requirements is to
run AUTOCALC.EXE.
Please NOTE question 7 (below) as well.
4. Q: I HAVE SPECIFIED CERTAIN FILES TO BE INSTALLED INTO THE WINDOWS
SYSTEM DIRECTORY WITH THE $SYSDIR COMMAND. WHY ARE THEY NOT BEING
INSTALLED?
A: The $SYSDIR, $WINDIR, $TEMPDIR, and $DEST lines only specify the
DESTINATION of the files on those lines (the default is to install
all files into the directory pointed to by $TARGET). When you
use any of these, you still have to put those files on your $DISK
lines, otherwise, they will not be installed at all.
Another possible cause is that your files are compressed, and you
are putting their compressed names (with underscores and all) on
these lines. The only place where you should use the file names
with the underscores (if they are compressed with the -r switch)
is on the $DISK lines. In EVERY other place where you specify file
names, you MUST use the original names of the files (i.e., the
names of the uncompressed files, before they were compressed).
5. Q: IN WHAT ORDER SHOULD THE ENTRIES IN MY INF FILE APPEAR?
A: The whole INF file is read and processed at once. This means that
the order is which the reserved words appear is not important in
most cases.
However, note that $USER-OPTION lines MUST appear before $OPTIONAL
lines, and that any reserved word which is numbered (e.g., $DISK,
$USER-OPTION, $OPTIONAL) must appear and be numbered in the correct
numerical order.
6. Q: IN WHAT LANGUAGE IS YOUR INSTALLER WRITTEN, AND WILL YOU SUPPLY
THE SOURCE CODE (ON PAYMENT OF A FEE)?
A: Chief's Installer Pro is written in Borland Pascal 7.01, and Borland
Delphi. I am sorry I cannot supply the source code.
7. Q: AUTOCALC SEEMS TO BE GETTING THE DISK SPACE CALCULCATIONS WRONG.
WHAT GIVES?
A: There are many causes for wrong calculations by AUTOCALC. The
primary cause is indiscriminate use of wildcards in your INF
file. Other causes, which might be related to the one already
mentioned are:
[a] Mixing wildcards and full file names on $DISK, $SYSDIR,
$WINDIR, $TEMPDIR, and $OPTIONAL lines - this might
result in some files being processed more than once.
[b] Having files in the directories being processed by
AUTOCALC which files are not going to be on your
distribution disks.
The bottom line is this - if you are going to use wildcards on
your $DISK and/or $OPTIONAL lines, you need to think very
carefully about what you are doing. It is up to you to arrange
your lines so that no file is liable to be processed twice -
this is because AUTOCALC processes your INF file _exactly_ as
it finds it.
In my view, it advisable to AVOID mixing wildcards and full file
names on $OPTIONAL lines. The $OPTIONAL lines in SAMPLE4.INF
are a good example of what will cause wrong calculations by
AUTOCALC.
8. Q. SOMETIMES I GET AN ERROR MESSAGE THAT THE DISK CANNOT BE READ.
WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN?
A. This sometimes happens when you are doing a multi-disk install,
and you have run INSTALL.EXE (instead of SETUP.EXE). This is
because Windows may have swapped out parts of INSTALL.EXE to
create room for other things to run, and now has to read
those parts again from INSTALL.EXE. If INSTALL.EXE is on disk 1
and you are currently on another disk (e.g., disk 3) then
INSTALL.EXE will not be found, and the error will occur.
The best was to avoid this type of problem is to follow the
principle that IF THERE IS MORE THAN ONE DISK IN YOUR INSTALLATION
SET, YOU SHOULD ALWAYS RUN SETUP.EXE (AND NOT INSTALL.EXE).
SETUP.EXE will call INSTALL.EXE at the appropriate point.
9. Q IF I WANT MY USERS TO RUN SETUP.EXE AND I WISH TO PREVENT THEM FROM
RUNNING INSTALL.EXE, HOW CAN I DO THIS?
A. You can compress INSTALL.EXE with Microsoft's COMPRESS.EXE (if you
have a copy), with the -r switch.
i.e., "COMPRESS -r INSTALL.EXE"
This will compress the file to INSTALL.EX_ - which of course your
users cannot run. When SETUP.EXE is executed, it will look first for
INSTALL.EXE. If that is not found, then it will look for INSTALL.EX_
and decompress it to the TEMP directory, and then it will run it.
NOTE: if you compress INSTALL.EXE you MUST use the -r switch.
10. Q. YOU KEEP TALKING ABOUT MICROSOFT'S COMPRESS.EXE IN YOUR
DOCUMENTATION; HOW CAN I GET A COPY?
A. COMPRESS.EXE is normally bundled with Windows development tools.
Microsoft has not permitted me to bundle it with Chief's
Installer Pro. However, if you have a Borland or Microsoft compiler,
you probably have the program already (usually in your compiler's
BIN directory).
I understand that a copy of COMPRESS.EXE is lurking around on the
internet somewhere, but I am afraid I cannot give further details.
If you conduct an ARCHIE search of internet FTP sites, you may be
able to find a reference to it. If you do find it on an ftp site,
please do NOT tell me about it (because it is probably not on the
net legally).
And, sorry, NO, I cannot send you a copy (perhaps Microsoft can).
In any case, you can ZIP your files and then use the $UNZIP command
to install them - you will probably get a greater compression ratio
than using the LZW compression in Microsoft's COMPRESS.EXE.
11. Q. I WISH TO INSTALL A FILE INTO MORE THAN ONE DIRECTORY. HOW CAN I
DO THIS?
A. You need to set $MAX-DUPLICATES to a number which is equal to, or
higher than the number of different directories you may want to
install the file to.
e.g., $MAX-DUPLICATES=5
Note however, that the higher the figure here, the slower your
installation will proceed, because the installer will have to loop
through the $DEST lines at least the number of times that you
specify in $MAX-DUPLICATES. So you really do not want to set the
value here too high. A maximum of 3 is probably a good trade-off
for performance reasons. If you do not care much about speed, then
you can set it to as high as 30.
12. Q. IF I WISH TO USE THE FULL RANGE OF FEATURES IN CHIEF'S INSTALLER PRO,
WHICH FILES MUST I HAVE ON MY DISTRIBUTION DISKS?
A. Really, the only files that are absolutely necessary are;
INSTALL.EXE
WINSTALL.INF
However, if you have only these files on your disk, many features will
be missing. For an installation program having the full range of features
offered by Chief Pro, you need all these files on your DISK #1
1. SETUP.EXE - loader for the installer
2. SETUPINF.INF - INF file for SETUP.EXE
3. INSTALL.EXE - main installer
4. WINSTALL.INF - INF file for INSTALL.EXE
5. WINSTALL.HLP - help file for the installation
6. WINSTALP.DLL - for the banner window
7. WINSTALZ.DLL - for UNZIP functions
8. WINSTALC.DLL - for the dialog icons
9. WINSTALL.TXT - for the README button
10.WINSTALL.MSG - for the message dialog during the install
ALL these files, except #1 and #2 (SETUP.EXE SETUPINF.INF) CAN
be compressed on your DISK #1. SETUP.EXE will decompress them
automatically. Thus, you can follow these steps (or run a DOS
batch file that goes something like this):
REM --- MAKEDSK1.BAT -----------
REM --- A DOS BATCH FILE TO COPY INSTALL FILES TO DISK #1
@ECHO OFF
C:
CD \TEMP
MD C:\TEMP\DIST
COPY SETUP.EXE C:\TEMP\DIST
COPY SETUPINF.INF C:\TEMP\DIST
COMPRESS -r INSTALL.EXE C:\TEMP\DIST
COMPRESS -r WINSTALL.INF C:\TEMP\DIST
COMPRESS -r WINSTALL.HLP C:\TEMP\DIST
COMPRESS -r WINSTALL.TXT C:\TEMP\DIST
COMPRESS -r WINSTALL.MSG C:\TEMP\DIST
COMPRESS -r WINSTALP.DLL C:\TEMP\DIST
COMPRESS -r WINSTALZ.DLL C:\TEMP\DIST
COMPRESS -r WINSTALC.DLL C:\TEMP\DIST
ECHO INSERT DISK #1 IN DRIVE A:
PAUSE > NUL
CD C:\TEMP\DIST
COPY *.* A:\
13. Q. I WOULD LIKE TO PUT ALL MY APPLICATION'S FILES IN ZIP ARCHIVES AND
THEN UNZIP THEM AT INSTALL TIME. CAN I DO THIS?
A. The answer is "YES". The easiest way to do this is to put the files
for each disk in one (or more) ZIP files, put those files on the
relevant disks, and then use the $UNZIP command on the $DISK# lines.
e.g.,
$DISK1=$UNZIP;$SOURCEDIR\PROG100.ZIP;$DEST;CONFIRM
$DISK2=$UNZIP;$SOURCEDIR\PROG200.ZIP;$DEST;CONFIRM
$DISK3=$UNZIP;$SOURCEDIR\PROG300.ZIP;$DEST\SRC;SKIP
$DISK4=$UNZIP;$SOURCEDIR\PROG400.ZIP;$DEST\DOC;SKIP
----------------------------------
Dr Abimbola Olowofoyeku (The Chief)
September 1995
E-mail: laa12@keele.ac.uk
chief@mep.com