Upgrading from Tarma Installer 2.x| In this section | Related information |
|---|---|
Tarma ExpertInstall helps you to create installation ("Setup") programs for your own software product. It consists of two major components:
To create an installer, you must go through the following steps:
At a later date, you can re-open the project, make changes, and rebuild. Or you can simply rebuild the project as-is, for example if some of the files were updated, but nothing else changed.
Tip: You also use Tarma ExpertInstall in batch mode to check or build your installers. See Command line syntax for details.
A Tarma ExpertInstall project contains information about your installer:
The project information is stored in a text file in XML format. It does NOT contain the actual installation files themselves; these reside elsewhere on your computer. Tarma ExpertInstall will copy them (in compressed form) to the installation package when it builds your installer, but leaves them up to you otherwise.
One of the unique features of Tarma ExpertInstall is that it allows you to create both Tarma native installers and Windows Installers (also known as MSI) from a single project.
Despite the fact that Tarma Installers contain their own Setup program and Windows Installers do not, Tarma Installer packages are usually smaller than the equivalent Windows Installer package.
You can specify the type of installer that you want to build on the Build Configurations project page. For the most part, it doesn't matter whether you will create a Tarma Installer or a Windows Installer package. You can specify the actual product contents without regard for the type of installer that you are building, and many other installation resources are also common to both types. However, there are also some differences as summarized in the following table.
| Item | Tarma Installer | Windows Installer |
|---|---|---|
| General contents | Great flexibility in available options and few hard requirements. | Many options apply to some, but not all types of installation items and are subject to specific requirements. |
| Dialog boxes | Are based on Windows dialog box resources; can be created and modified by the built-in Tarma dialog box editor on the Installer Dialogs project page. | Use an internal MSI format dialog boxes; can be created and modified by the built-in MSI dialog box editor on the Dialogs and Billboards project page. |
| Installer actions |
Tarma-specific standard and custom actions; can be created and modified on the Action Sequences (Tarma) project page. Tarma action sequences are very flexible; you can even use them to create applications that are not really installers, but for example AutoRun applications. |
MSI-specific standard and custom actions; can be created and modified on the Action Sequences (MSI) project page. MSI actions sequences are fairly rigidly defined; you must include a small number of required actions sequences and the actions in them must obey strict rules. |
| Localized strings | A single set of strings that may be localized (i.e., translated into different languages) and are used throughout the installer. They are available on the Localized Strings (Tarma) project page. | Three separate sets of strings that are used throughout the installer. They are available on the Action Texts, Error Messages, and Localized Strings (MSI) project pages. |
| Multilingual installers | You can create single-language installers, separate per-language installers for different languages, or multilingual installers that contain all languages in a single package. | You can create single-language installers or separate per-language installers for different languages. Multilingual installers are not supported. |
Upgrading from Tarma Installer 2.xFor more information about the differences between Tarma Installer 2 and ExpertInstall and for upgrading your Tarma Installer 2.x projects, see Upgrading from Tarma Installer 2.