Installer SFX creation using XSEBuilder

This document describes creation of SFX archives using XSEBuilder and archive definition files. While you still can use old technique, which described in Installer SFX creation, we strongly recommend to use XSEBuilder - it's much easier and convenient way.

Overview

Creation of sfx archive are consist of two steps: Creating SFX Archive Definition File and passing it with some arguments to the builder. This document covers the latter.

Using XSEBuilder

Where to get and requirements

XSEBuilder itself can be downloaded from CVS repository at dev.eclipse.org (module /cvsroot/technology/org.eclipse.epp/plugins/org.eclipse.epp.sfx.tools). It requires this Java projects : org.eclipse.epp.sfx.archive and org.eclipse.epp.installer.core. They are located in same repository.

Archive Definition File

Archive Definition File is an XML file with structure like in example below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <?sfx version="1.0"?>

 <sfxArchive>
	 <source path="C:\Folder_with_content">
		<dir path="required_directory" unpack="true"/>
		<file path="some_not_required_file"/>
                <file path="another_not_required_file" unpack="anything, but not true"/>
		<file path="required_file" unpack="true"/>
	</source>
	 <destination path="C:\name of archive.sfx" cmd="some_native_application.exe some_required_file"/>
 </sfxArchive>

As you can see, definition consist of two major parts: source and destination. Every child of source node is a description of archive entry: it's type (file or directory), path (path attribute value) and necessity of entry extraction before starting autorun application(value of unpack attribute).