General Settings - Media File Options


  On this tab of the General Settings step you enter general options regarding media file generation.
  Only options with bold labels have to be filled in. The available options are:
  • Media file output directory
    (required) the directory where the generated media files should be placed. If the project has already been saved, a relative directory will be interpreted as relative to the project file.
  • Media file name pattern
    (required) the default rule for naming your media files. This text field should contain system compiler variables in order to be unique for each media file. If two media file names are equal, the build will fail. If the desired name for the media file cannot be obtained through the use of variables, you can override the media file name in the media wizard.
  • Convert dots to underscores
    By default, dots ('.') will be converted to underscores ('_') when the media file name is evaluated. If you would like to keep all dots in your media file name, please de-select this option.
  • Compression level
    The desired level of compression for your media files, chosen from a range of 1-9. "1" means least compressed and "9" means most compressed. Please note that extracting the media files will take longer for higher compression levels.
  • Use LZMA compression
    LZMA compression achieves much better results, but is considerably slower, especially for compilation. LZMA compression is only used for installers and not for archives.
  • Use Pack200 JAR compression
    Pack200 compression is a compression algorithm that's designed for JAR files and achieves exceptional results, especially for large JAR files. Since the Pack200 deflater is only included since JRE 1.5, this compression is only used if the minimum Java version requirement for your project is 1.5.

    If you have signed JAR files or JAR files that create a digest, please apply the $JDK_HOME/bin/pack200 executable in your build process like

    pack200 --repack my.jar
    before signing the JAR files. Pack200 rearranges JAR files but the reordering is idempotent, so this pack/unpack sequence creates a stable JAR file.

    Pack200 compression can be quite slow, Pack200 decompression is relatively fast. Pack200 compression is only used for installers and not for archives.

    To avoid problems with external JAR files, you can check the "Exclude signed JARs or JARs creating digests" option. If you would like to exclude selected JAR files only, you can place an empty *.nopack file next to it. For example, if the jar file is named app.jar, then a file app.jar.nopack in the same directory will disable Pack200 compression for that file.

    To pass options to the packer, create a file *.packoptions next to the file and add one option per line. Currently, only -P and --pass-file are supported.

  • Shrink runtime
    If selected, the runtime JAR file i4jruntime.jar that contains the support classes for the installer and the API will be shrunk, meaning that all unused classed will be removed. Usages from custom code and classes in generated launchers are considered during the shrinking process. If you have Java code in external launchers that uses the API, then shrinking might lead to ClassNotFoundExceptions at runtime. In this case, please disable runtime shrinking.

    Note that if you have configured merged projects, and one of the projects in the project tree has disabled runtime shrinking, then runtime shrinking will be disabled for the main project as well.

  • Create common data files where possible
    If you use the "external" or "downloadable" data file settings in the Data Files step of the media wizard, you might want to generate common data files for different media files in order to save disk space. If this option is selected, a directory common_files.dat will be created in the media output directory during the compilation that holds the data files that can be used by all media files. This only works for installation components that have the same content for different media files.
  • Create files with MD5 sums for checking the integrity of data files
    If you want to verify the integrity of downloaded data files, this option enables the generation of MD5 checksum files next to the data files. The installer will try to download the MD5 files first and check the downloaded data files against it.
  A build will not be possible until all required fields have been completed. If a required field is missing when starting a build, this tab will be displayed with a warning message.