Using Tarma QuickInstall

Before you get started with Tarma QuickInstall, please take a moment to read the overview below.

Tip — If you are in a desperate hurry, refer to Common Tasks for step-by-step instructions on common installation tasks.

What Tarma QuickInstall does

Tarma QuickInstall helps you to create fast and flexible Setup packages for your application – whether your application consists of a single file or many hundreds. Throughout this document, we use the terms Tarma QuickInstall and TIN Builder interchangeably to designate the development environment that you use to define which files must be installed where, and what else needs to be done when your customer installs your application. Internally, Tarma QuickInstall uses several other programs to do its work, but you do not interact with them directly.

The information that you supply about your application – title, version, installation files, etc. – is stored in a project file. Tarma QuickInstall project files have a .tin file name extension and contain all project settings, including links to your application's files. (The files themselves are not stored in the project file, but are added to the Setup package when you build the project – see below.)

Tarma QuickInstall maintains all project settings for you. After initially creating the project, you can revisit it as often as you like to add, remove, or change settings, then rebuild your Setup package with a single keystroke (F7 – Project > Build).

More about Setup Packages...

What you need to do

Here are the steps that you take to create a Setup package:

1. Create a new TIN project (see below). A TIN project contains all information about the Setup package that you are designing: the files that will be distributed and installed, any shortcuts that go with them, special actions, and much more.
2. Enter general product information: application title, version, your company's name (or your own), copyrights, etc.
3. Add the files that must be distributed and installed. This can be as simple as a drag & drop between Windows Explorer and Tarma QuickInstall, or you can add files with Tarma QuickInstall's smart file filter. Or any combination thereof.
4. Optionally, indicate if any shortcuts to files must be installed along with the files.
5. Establish the basic installation configuration: where on the customer's computer your product should be installed and whether or not you require specific Windows versions or hardware for your product.
6. If you want to include a Readme file and a License Agreement, you can do so too.
7. Select Project > Build from the main menu or press the F7 key. Tarma QuickInstall will prompt for the name of the Setup package, perform various preflight tests, then collect the installation files, compress them, add them to the distribution file, and optionally attach a digital signature to the entire package.

That's it! And because Tarma QuickInstall provides smart default settings for virtually everything, you can literally have your Setup package ready in minutes.

How to get started

To get started with a new project, do the following:

1. Start Tarma QuickInstall if it isn't already running. There should be a shortcut to it on your Windows Desktop; if not, choose Start > Programs > Tarma QuickInstall > Tarma QuickInstall 2.x.
   
2. The TIN Assistant page appears. Click Create New Project, choose File > New Project, or press Ctrl+N to create a new project.
3. Start entering your information on the various pages. To go from one page to the next, press Ctrl+PgDn or click on the white right-pointing arrow near the top-right corner of the Tarma QuickInstall window. To go to the previous page, press Ctrl+PgUp or click the left-pointing arrow.
   
4. When you reach the Build page, enter a name for the Setup package that you will distribute, then click Build.

Tip — For more information about each page, click on the ? next to the white arrows. This displays the help information for the current project page.

Page hints

When you first start Tarma QuickInstall, it has the page hints feature turned on. Page hints are small yellow notes that appear over each project page and contain tips about the page's purpose and its main features. To toggle page hints on or off, click the button on the main toolbar.