Mobile Component attributes
A Mobile Component is a component that defines a Windows Mobile installation cabinet (.cab file). It behaves as a regular component, but in addition represents a Windows Mobile .cab file that installs files, folders, etc. on a Windows Mobile device.
When you build your installer, the following happens for each Mobile Component in your project:
- InstallMate generates a Windows Mobile installation cabinet for the Mobile Component that contains all its Mobile content (i.e., mobile files, folders, shortcuts, registry keys, and registry values in the component), plus the required instructions to install them on an appropriate mobile device. The name of this cabinet file is Name-0001.cab, where Name is specified by the Name field, below.
- In addition, InstallMate generates a small .ini file with instructions for the CE Application Manager program. This file has the name Name.ini.
- The generated installation cabinet file and its .ini companion are included in the overall installation package, for delivery to the user's desktop system from where they can be installed on any connected mobile device.
- Any non-mobile content of the Mobile Component (i.e., regular files, folders, etc.) is treated normally; for that type of content, the Mobile Component behaves as a regular component. This allows you to control both mobile content and closely related desktop content through a single component.
Each Mobile Component's .cab file and its .ini companion will be delivered to the user's desktop system, subject to the normal installation rules for components and their parent features. In particular, the generated files will be installed in the parent feature's folder, as defined by the feature's Folder alias field. If you set the Mobile Component's Install type attribute (see below) to Use CE App Manager, then the .cab file will automatically be installed on any connected mobile device.
Note: InstallMate currently supports installation on mobile devices running Windows Mobile 4.2 or later (i.e., Pocket PC 2003, SmartPhone 2003, or Windows Mobile 5.0 and later).
Attributes
This pane contains the following attributes and options.
| Attribute | Description | ||||||||
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| Name | Enter the name of the component. This name is used to refer to the component in conditional expressions and symbolic expressions elsewhere in the project, but is not visible to the user. Each component must have a name that is unique within the project. | ||||||||
| Install title | Enter the user-visible title for the mobile component. This title is used during the installation of the component on a mobile device, and also as an identification on the device itself. The full identification consists of the Provider name (see below) followed by the title that you specify here. You can use symbolic expressions in the title, but they will be resolved when the installer is built, not during installation. | ||||||||
| Register with GUID |
Check this box to register the component globally during installation; clear the box to keep the component private to the product. If you check this box, you must also provide a GUID (Globally Unique IDentifier) for the component. When you create a registered component, InstallMate Builder automatically generates a new GUID for the component. Unless you have a good reason to change this GUID and are aware of the implications, we recommend that you keep the GUID that was generated for you. The component GUID must be unique across all Windows software; it is used, among other things, to uniquely identify your assemblies on Windows systems. If the GUID accidentally or intentionally matches the GUID of a different component or component (whether yours or someone else's), the information for the two components will get mixed up. The component GUID must have the following format: {aaaaaaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd-eeeeeeeeeeee} Each group of characters must consist of uppercase hexadecimal digits, i.e., the characters 0-9 and A-F. |
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| Lock GUID | Check this box to protect the GUID field against accidental changes (the field will be made read-only); clear it to allow editing of the GUID field. Because it is very important that the GUID of your assemblies remain unchanged throughout their lifetime, we recommend that you keep this box checked. | ||||||||
| Generate |
Click this button to generate a new GUID and copy it to the GUID field. The GUID is generated by the Windows UuidCreate function and is guaranteed to be globally unique if your computer contains a functioning network card. Note: No network access takes place when the GUID is generated, but the network card's unique identifier is used as part of the new GUID. This is combined with time and date information and a counter, and the result is then securely hashed to make it impossible to reconstruct any of the original information. Note: Assembly GUIDs are not updated by the Project > Generate New GUIDs command. You must manually generate a new GUID for each component. |
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| Provider name | Enter the user-visible provider name for the mobile component. This name is used during the installation of the component on a mobile device, and also as an identification on the device itself. The full identification consists of the provider name followed by the Install title (see above). You can use symbolic expressions in the title, but they will be resolved when the installer is built, not during installation. | ||||||||
| Condition | Enter a conditional expression that determines if the component will be installed, or leave empty if the component must be installed unconditionally. Unless you check the Dynamic option (below), the condition is only evaluated once during the UpdateComponents standard action , to ensure that the component will not be accidentally installed or removed during a subsequent run of the same installation package because of changes to the condition. | ||||||||
| Dynamic | Check this box to re-evaluate the condition during each installer run; clear it to evaluate the condition only once. If this option is checked, the installer re-evaluates the conditon during each UpdateComponents action; with the option cleared, only the first such action evaluates the condition. | ||||||||
| Platforms... |
Click this button to open the Select Installation Platforms dialog box that allows you to select the Windows versions on which the component must be installed. This platform selection acts as an additional condition for the component. InstallMate fully supports platform selection at installation time. In addition, when a Build Configuration is being built InstallMate will include or exclude assemblies depending on the overlap between the component's Platforms selection and the build configuration's build platforms. A BLD:Q0062 diagnostic message will be issued if an component is excluded based on the build platforms. |
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| Languages... |
Click this button to open the Select Installation Languages dialog box that allows you to select the languages for which the component must be installed. This language selection acts as an additional condition for the component. InstallMate fully supports language selection at installation time. In addition, when a Build Configuration is being built InstallMate will include or exclude assemblies depending on the overlap between the component's Platforms selection and the build configuration's build platforms. A BLD:Q0063 diagnostic message will be issued if an component is excluded based on the build languages. |
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| Build condition |
Enter a conditional expression that determines if the component will be included in the build, or leave empty if the component must be included in all builds. The build condition is evaluated during the preflight test for each Build Configuration; you can use the Build variables attribute in the Build Configuration pane to control if the component will be included for a particular configuration. If the condition evaluates to false, the component and all the installation objects that are controlled by it are excluded from the build process for the configuration. |
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| Packaging |
Select the desired packaging option for the files that belong to the component. The packaging option that you select here overrides the packaging option from the build configuration. The following choices are available:
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| Comment | Free-form text field in which you can enter annotations for the component. This field is not used by the installer; it is only intended for your own documentation. | ||||||||
| Install type |
Select the installation type of component from the drop-down box. The following choices are available:
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| Min CE version | Enter the minimum Windows CE version that your application requires, in the format major.minor.build, or leave empty for no minimum version. | ||||||||
| Max | Enter the maximum Windows CE version that your application requires, in the format major.minor.build, or leave empty for no maximum version. | ||||||||
| Advanced... | Click this button to open the Mobile Component advanced options dialog box, with the Mobile Component - Advanced, Mobile Component - Pre-XML text, and Mobile Component - Post-XML text pages. |