Tarma ExpertInstall is the almost completely rewritten successor to Tarma Installer 2.x. Even though its overall purpose remains the same, version 3 has many more features and uses a different internal design than version 2 did. The following table summarizes the most important differences.
| Item | Tarma Installer 2 | Tarma ExpertInstall |
|---|---|---|
| Basic functionality | Installation and removal of folders, files, shortcuts | Same, but with many new options |
| System editing | Installation and removal of registry values, INI file values, and environment variables | Same, but with many new options. In addition, service installation and removal is now directly supported. |
| Selective installation | Limited to simple conditions | Fully feature- and component-based; can be selected at installation time. A full complement of conditions is also supported. |
| Installer actions | Limited custom actions; fixed built-in action sequences | All action sequences can be fully edited; many new custom action types. |
| Installer user interface | Limited to predefined Setup.exe stubs | All user interface elements and dialogs can be fully edited without special tools. The entire user interface sequence can be redesigned (or removed) if desired. |
| Installer types | Self-extracting or plain file | Self-extracting Tarma Installer or Windows Installer (MSI). Multiple parallel build configurations allow you to create both Tarma and MSI installers from the same project. |
| MSI support | None | Most MSI 2.0 features are supported, including user interface authoring and merge modules. |
| Multilingual installers | US English only, per-language, or multilingual | Default language only, per-language, or multilingual |
| Localization | Readme and License texts can be localized; file installation can be made language-specific. The user interface localization is limited to the predefined language DLLs. | Virtually any aspect of the installation package can be localized. Localization can be done piecemeal on an item-by-item and language-by-language basis. All user interface elements can be localized. |
| Project files | Essentially ANSI-encoded .ini files. See details below. | Unicode-encoded XML files. See details below. |
Tarma ExpertInstall can open projects created with Tarma Installer 2, version 2.21 and later. When opening a Tarma Installer 2 ("Tin2") project, the project contents are automatically converted to the Tarma ExpertInstall ("Tin3") structure and conventions. The original Tin2 project is not modified; when you save a converted project, it is stored in a new Tin3-format project file. Tarma Installer 2 cannot handle Tin3 projects.
To support all new Tarma ExpertInstall features, the Tin3 project file format was completely redesigned. The new Tin3 format is based on XML 1.0 in Unicode encoding; if you used tools to modify the Tin2 project files outside of the Tarma Installer development environment, you will have to adapt them to handle the new format. The following table summarizes the most important differences between the Tin2 and the Tin3 formats.
| Item | Tarma Installer 2 | Tarma ExpertInstall |
|---|---|---|
| Project file extension | .tin | .tip |
| Project file encoding | ANSI (using the default code page) | Unicode (UTF-8 or UTF-16) |
| Project file format | Derived from Windows .ini files | XML 1.0 |
| Localization | Limited to the default code page | Full Unicode 4.0 support, except for surrogates |
| Editable? | Yes, with any plain text editor or tool | Only with Unicode-enabled text editors and tools |
| Structure | Mostly flat, with a few nesting levels | Fully nested, follows XML 1.0 syntax rules |
| Robustness | Forgiving of minor errors | Unforgiving; requires precise adherence to Unicode encoding and XML syntax rules |
When you open a Tarma Installer 2 project in Tarma ExpertInstall, the project contents are automatically converted to Tin3 conventions. After conversion to Tin3 conventions, you can rebuild your project. The resulting installer should be equivalent to the original Tin2 installer.
The table below shows where the Tarma Installer 2 project pages went in Tarma ExpertInstall. Click on the Tarma Installer 2 links for detailed conversion information, or on the Tarma ExpertInstall links for information about the new project pages.
If you want to create an MSI installer from a Tin2 project, you can just open the Tin2 project in Tin3. Most of the conversions that are done apply to MSI installers as well as native Tarma installers. However, the following areas might require some manual adjustments:
Furthermore, before you can build an MSI installer from a converted Tin2 project, you must add a new MSI build configuration on the Build Configurations project page.