Tip of the Month (September 2005)

Creating a Single Runtime Installer for Report CE and Visual CE

---------------------------------------------------------------

The Visual CE Professional Edition, Report CE Professional Edition, and the MobileSuites allow you to build an installer that you can distribute to third parties. The resultant installer installs either the Visual CE runtime system or the Report CE runtime system, but not both.

Your Visual CE forms may launch a Report CE report and you may want your installer to install not only your Visual CE forms and the Visual CE runtime system, but also the Report CE templates and the Report CE runtime system.

To do this:

(A) Create an installer for just the Visual CE forms as you would normally do.

(B) In a separate installation folder, create an installer for just the Report CE template as you would normaly do.

(C) Using a text editor such as notepad, modify the file called "Visual CE.lod" in the folder you created in step (A). Change

copy   .   .   vicert.exe

to

copy   .   .   vicert.exe
copy   .   .   rcert.exe

(D) In the folder you created in step (B), open a file called "Report CE.lod" using a text editor such as notepad. In step (4) of the "Report CE.lod" there are some 'copy' directives (and maybe some 'mkdir' directives). Cut and paste these into the "Visual CE.lod" file after the line "copy . . rcert.exe" that you just added in step (C).

(E) Find all the files in the folder you created in step (B) whose name begins with RCERT.exe. There are several of them: RCERT.exe.ARM_2K, RCERT.exe.SH3_2K, etc. Copy them all to the folder you created in step (A).

The folder you created in step (A) will now install both the Visual CE and Report CE.