Assembly attributes

Select the type of assembly from the drop-down box. The following choices are available:

Each global assembly must fulfill the following requirements:

1. Its manifest file must be signed and contain a public key or public key token.
2. [Side-by-side] The assembly must be accompanied by a security catalog with the digital signature of the assembly;
3. [.Net] The assembly must be digitally signed.

Tarma Workshop will produce a number of diagnostic warnings if you build a project that does not conform to these requirements. Do not ignore these warnings; they indicate issues that will cause your installer to fail.

Enter the name of the assembly. This name is used to refer to the assembly in conditional expressions and symbolic expressions elsewhere in the project, but is not visible to the user. Each assembly must have a name that is unique within the project.

By default, the name of the assembly item in your project is the same as the "strong" name of the assembly that it represents. The format of this strong name depends on the type of assembly and the Windows version; Tarma Workshop generates a name that is representative of the most common implementations. This name contains the following elements (the order may vary):

• The processor architecture: amd64, ia64, msil, x86, or any
• The assembly's base name, usually in the format Company.Product.Application
• The public key token, if any
• The assembly's version number as major.minor.build.revision
• The assembly's language or culture code, or neutral or none if language/culture-neutral

Enter the GUID (Globally Unique IDentifier) for the assembly. When you create a new assembly, Tarma Workshop automatically generates a new GUID for the assembly. 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 assembly 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 assembly or component (whether yours or someone else's), the information for the two components will get mixed up.

The assembly 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.

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 assembly.

Click this button to open the Select Installation Platforms dialog box that allows you to select the Windows versions on which the assembly must be installed. This platform selection acts as an additional condition for the assembly.

Tarma Installer fully supports platform selection at installation time. In addition, when a Build Configuration is being built Tarma Installer will include or exclude assemblies depending on the overlap between the assembly's Platforms selection and the build configuration's build platforms. A BLD:Q0062 diagnostic message will be issued if an assembly is excluded based on the build platforms.

Click this button to open the Select Installation Languages dialog box that allows you to select the languages for which the assembly must be installed. This language selection acts as an additional condition for the assembly.

Tarma Installer fully supports language selection at installation time. In addition, when a Build Configuration is being built Tarma Installer will include or exclude assemblies depending on the overlap between the assembly's Platforms selection and the build configuration's build platforms. A BLD:Q0063 diagnostic message will be issued if an assembly is excluded based on the build languages.

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.

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: