What’s New in InstallAnywhere 2017
InstallAnywhere 2021
InstallAnywhere 2017 includes the following new features:
| • | New Rules Manager Allows Creation of Complex Rule Expressions at the Project Level |
| • | Customizable Advanced Runtime UI Themes |
| • | Ability to Install RPMs and DEBs from Install Linux Package Action |
| • | Support for the Latest Platforms |
| • | Enhancements |
New Rules Manager Allows Creation of Complex Rule Expressions at the Project Level
InstallAnywhere now includes a rule expression manager which allows installer authors to:
| • | Create complex rule expressions at the project level |
| • | Combine multiple rules and save them to a single rule expression |
| • | Reuse a rule or a set of rules across the project |
| • | Associate a rule expression to a file extension, including the option to automatically associate the rule expression to a file whenever a file containing that file extension is added to the project |
| • | Remove associated rules from custom file extensions |
See the following help topics in the InstallAnywhere Help library for procedures about various functionality that you can do with project level rule expressions:
| • | Configuring and Saving a New Rule Expression |
| • | Associating a Rule Expression to a File Extension |
| • | Loading a Rule Expression |
| • | Deleting a Saved Rule Expression |
Customizable Advanced Runtime UI Themes
InstallAnywhere has improved the runtime user experience of the installer by adding customizable advanced runtime UI themes. A theme is a set of runtime UI settings that are used to customize the installer panels and frames. For example, you can specify fonts, font attributes, and even import your own fonts. You can customize the colors of windows and buttons, choose to use frameless windows, display your company’s own logo in the installer steps panels, and many other settings.
For complete information about each of the advanced runtime UI theme settings available and for information about how to customize advanced runtime UI themes, see the UI Panel Settings Area topic.
Ability to Install RPMs and DEBs from Install Linux Package Action
Edition:These features are available in the following editions:
| • | InstallAnywhere Premier Edition with Virtualization and Cloud |
| • | InstallAnywhere Premier Edition |
In InstallAnywhere 2017, the Install Linux RPM install action has been updated to Install Linux Package and now allows you to install and uninstall Linux RPM Package Manager (.rpm) files, Debian (.deb) packages, or files from a default or a custom repository. The package files can either be bundled with the installer or can be pre-existing on the system.
If you choose to install from a repository, there are two options:
| • | Install from Repository—Install from the default distribution repository on the machine you are targeting |
| • | Install from Repository / Custom Repository—Install from a specified location of a custom repository. When you click the Custom Repository check box, the Choose Repository button is enabled, allowing you to search for the custom repository location, choosing either a *.list file for Debian file distributions or *.repo for Linux. |
If the RPM or DEB is relocatable, and the Relocatable check box is selected in the action customizer, the file is installed to its location in the file tree.
Additionally, the RPM or DEB can be set to Ignore Dependencies (similar to the --nodeps option for the command-line RPM tool) and to Force Installation (--force).
You can also choose Do Not Uninstall. For custom repositories, the only check box that is available is to Do Not Uninstall.
The Install Linux Package action allows you to add only one package at a time. If you want to add additional packages, click Add Action again.
For complete information about install actions, refer to the Install Actions topic.
Support for the Latest Platforms
InstallAnywhere now supports the following platforms for running the installer run-time environment, as well as for the InstallAnywhere authoring environment:
| • | Windows 10 Anniversary Update (x86 and x64) |
| • | Windows 2016 Server (x64) |
| • | macOS Sierra (10.12) |
| • | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 (x64) |
| • | OpenSUSE Linux 13.2 (x64) |
| • | SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 (SP1, x64) |
| • | Fedora 24 (desktop editions; x64) |
InstallAnywhere now supports the following platforms for running the installer run-time environment:
| • | CentOS 7 (x86, x64) |
| • | CentOS 6.8 (x86, x64) |
| • | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 for PowerPC (little endian) |
| • | Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (x64) |
This section lists enhancements that were included in InstallAnywhere 2017:
| • | New Command-Line Build-Related Argument to Generate Encrypted Variable Value |
| • | New Require Root Setting Available Under Project Page in the Platforms View |
| • | Modify Text File Action Enhancement |
| • | Support for Croatian Local Added |
New Command-Line Build-Related Argument to Generate Encrypted Variable Value
When building using the command line, you can use a new build-related argument to allow you to generate an encrypted hexadecimal value that can be directly copied and pasted into a response file as an encrypted variable value.
build -encrypt <product-code> <text-to-encrypt>
The resulting encrypted hexadecimal value can then be used later. For example, you could update the master response file with an encrypted value generated from a password without needing to first run the entire installation to only generate this value.
This enhancement resolves issue IOJ-1758930.
New Require Root Setting Available Under Project Page in the Platforms View
The following new settings are available in the Unix area of the Project Page under the Platforms view.
|
Setting |
Description |
|
Require Root |
Specify whether the installer requires root account permissions. A root account is the user name or account that by default has access to all commands and files on a Linux or other Unix-like operating system. It is also referred to as the root account, root user, or the superuser. If you select Yes in this setting, the Error Message setting under Require Root is enabled. |
|
Error Message |
Specify an error message to appear if the installer is run with a non-root account. This field is enabled when Yes is selected from the Require Root drop-down list. |
Modify Text File Action Enhancement
The Modify Text File actions have been enhanced to allow you specify both the source file that is being opened and read as well as the destination file that is being saved after it has been modified. To account for this change, the previous File Encoding field has been replaced with the following two fields:
| • | Source File Encoding |
| • | Destination File Encoding |
In previous versions of InstallAnywhere, there were instances where leaving the File Encoding field blank resulted in a loss of characters when saving the destination file as a result of Java not being able to easily detect what kind of encoding the file was actually using. Therefore, with this enhancement, you can now explicitly specify the source file and destination file encoding to ensure no loss of characters are experienced in the process. Now, the encoding that is applied is dependent solely upon the destination file encoding provided irrespective of the source file encoding. The following table provides example of the file encoding that is applied in cases where the destination file coding is left blank, is invalid, or is unsupported.
|
Source File Encoding |
Destination File Encoding |
Encoding Applied |
|
empty |
empty |
UTF-8 |
|
invalid (eg. Hello) |
empty |
UTF-8 |
|
unsupported (cp1047) |
empty |
UTF-8 |
|
empty |
invalid |
Platform default |
|
empty |
unsupported |
Platform default |
This enhancements applies to the following actions:
| • | Modify Text File - In Archive Action |
| • | Modify Text File - Multiple Files Action |
| • | Modify Text File - Single File Action |
Support for Croatian Local Added
Edition:The Premier edition of InstallAnywhere includes default run-time strings in 31 supported languages. TheProfessional edition includes default run-time strings in 9 languages.
InstallAnywhere has added support the Croatian locale. You can now specify Croatian as a locale you want your installation to support. For information about specifying a locale to your installer, refer to the Generating Multilanguage Installers topic.
See Also