The "Installer->Screens & Actions" step shows a tree representation of the installer, the uninstaller and other installer applications, such as updaters. The nodes in the tree are of the following types:
In this chapter, the functionality and configuration options on the "Installer->Screens & Actions" step are discussed, the underlying concepts are discussed in a different help topic.
Installer elements are added by clicking the
Add button.
In the popup window you can select whether to add
Installer elements can only be added to appropriate parent elements. If no appropriate parent element is selected, install4j tries to find one by moving in the ancestor hierarchy from the current selection. If no appropriate parent element can be found, an error message is displayed.
If you select a single installer element in the tree of installer elements, you can edit its properties on the right side. Selecting multiple installer elements is possible on the same tree level, meaning that all selected elements have to be siblings in the tree.
When the configuration area is focused, you can transfer the focus back to the tree of installer elements with
the keyboard by pressing ALT-F1
.
The tree of installer elements provides the following actions in the toolbar on the right that operate on the current selection. You can also access these actions from the context menu or use the associated keyboard shortcuts.
Delete
All selected installer elements will be deleted after a confirmation dialog when invoking theRename
After you add an installer element, the tree of installer elements shows it with its default name. If you have multiple instances of the same installer element next to each other, a custom name makes it easier to distinguish these instances. You can assign a custom name to each installer element with theComment
You can add comments to selected installer elements with the
Add Comments action. When a comment
is added, the affected installer elements will receive a "Comments" tab. After adding a comment to a single
installer element, the comment area is focused automatically. Likewise, you can remove comments from one or
more installer elements with the Remove Comments action.
In order to visit all comments, you can use the Show next comment and Show previous comment actions. These actions will focus the comment area automatically and wrap around if no further comments can be found.
Disable
In order to "comment out" installer elements, you can use theCopy and paste
install4j has a clipboard for installer elements. You can
Cut or
Copy installer elements to the
clipboard and
Paste them in the
same project or in a different project. Note that references to launchers or references to files in the
distribution tree might not be valid after pasting to a different project.
Pasted installer elements are appended to the end of the same level that would be chosen if you added installer elements of that type. Sequence restrictions with respect to the already present installer elements may force a different order.
Reorder
If your selection is a single contiguous interval, you can move the entire blockGroup
You can create a screen group or an action group from the
selected installer elements with the
Create Group action.
The new group will be inserted in place of the selected installer elements.
You can dissolve a group with the Dissolve Group action. This action is only enabled if the selection consists of a single screen group or action group. The elements contained in the group will be inserted in place of the group. Nested groups will not be dissolved.
Link
You can reuse screens and actions by linking to a single definition. This is particularly useful if you define an installer maintenance application that should repeat parts of the installer, such as a number of forms that query the user for initial values to set up your application. Also, links are the only way to integrate screens and actions from merged project into the main project.
In order to link to a screen, action, screen group or action group, you click on the add button and select Add Link Into from the popup menu. The first entry in that popup menu is always "This project" for links into the current project. If you have set up merged projects, then you get an entry for each merged project. The configuration area of a link will only contain a button that selects the original definition in the tree of installer elements. For merged projects, the merged project is opened in a new window, unless it is already open.
Another way to add a link into the same project is to select the installer element and invoke the
Copy Link action. Then you navigate
to the installer element where the link should be inserted and invoke the Paste Link action.
For links into the same project, install4j ensures that there are no broken links in the tree of installer elements. When you delete an installer element, all links to it will be deleted as well. If that is the case, the deletion message will tell you how many links are about to be deleted. Links into merged projects may be broken, this condition is shown in in the configuration panel.
When using the install4j API, you reference installer
elements with IDs. You can show IDs in the tree of installer elements by toggling the
Show IDs tool bar button.
In order to adjust the information density in the tree of installer elements, you can change the icon size by choosing large or small icons in the Icon Size sub-menu in the context menu. The default setting is to show large icons.