InstallBuilder Action Lists

Creating an installer is not as straightforward as most people think. This is especially the case for more sophisticated configurations, such as when you need to execute different platform-specific actions at different stages of the installation process. You may need to check a registry value, create a configuration file, execute a particular command, make substitutions in text files or even connect to an external server via a HTTP POST request. BitRock InstallBuilder includes a number of useful built-in actions to facilitate adding complex functionality to your installer. Actions can be accessed by editing the XML project file directly or in the 'Advanced' section of the InstallBuilder GUI.

InstallBuilder actions are organized in what are called action lists, which are executed at specific points of the installation process. It is important to understand how and when each action must be performed, what differences exist between action lists inside components and within the primary installer, how the installer will behave when you run it in different installation modes (GUI, text, or unattended) and what happens when you generate rpm or deb packages.

Unattended Mode

As you may know, installers generated with InstallBuilder provide different execution modes using the command line option "--mode". The mode "unattended" is particularly useful when we need to incorporate installations into an automated process. With this mode, the installer will not prompt the user for any information and will instead take the default settings configured for each of the parameters. That way, it is possible to incorporate the installer execution into scripts since no input is required from the user during the installation.

Note that you are not forced to use only the default values when running the installer in this mode. You can also define the values through command line switches which are generated for each parameter definition inside the InstallBuilder project. If we want to use specific values, we should run the installation as follows:

InstallBuilder 6.2.4 Now Available

We just released version 6.2.4 of InstallBuilder our crossplatform installation and automatic update tool. The new release includes several enhancements, such as an improved builder tool on Mac OS X x86 and unattended install support for the autoupdate mechanism. The addition of unattended mode in the automatic update tool means that updates can be applied silently without user interaction. A complete list of improvements can be viewed in InstallBuilder's changelog.