AIR All-in-one installers on CD/DVD

One of the biggest hurdles I felt that I had to overcome to make AIR a viable alternative to the reigning SWF wrapper was installation. The Badge installer has been well documented and publicized but so far the side-car installer has received almost no attention. Ultimately, the ability to create a user-friendly installation process from CD/DVD without requiring internet connectivity is an absolute requirement for a large portion of our projects. On this page I will lay out the few and simple steps required to put together a Mac/PC CD/DVD with a one click runtime/app installers for both platform.

1. Make an air file

Build your "NativeApplication" and export for release (Flex developers) or package your html and javascript files as an AIR file (Javascript developers).

2. Apply for a distribution license

You can apply for a runtime distribution license here.

3. Download installer files (link provided by adobe in email)

Once your runtime distribution application has been accepted you will be notified via email and that email will contain links to download the runtime installation as well as their "side-car" installer for Mac and Windows. This may take a day or two to go through so don't do this last minute.

4. Create a file calle .airinstall.cfg

As instructed by the documentation found on the download page for the runtime environment you will want to create a file called ".airinstall.cfg". Since files starting with a "." will be hidden on OS X I find it useful to have a utility such as Houdini at my disposal to turn hidden files visibility on and off (see link at the bottom of this article). The file should be a plain text file and the only contents of it should be the name of your air file (you could have the path and keep the air file in a subfolder but my personal opinion is that you'd be tempting fate, keep it simple and keep your air file on the root of the cd/dvd).

5. Gather both the Mac and the PC side-car install files

Now copy all the files from the Windows and Mac side-car installer downloads into a folder with your Air package. I like to master on a Mac since in my experience OS X is better at handling PC files than Windows is at handling Mac files. Your folder should look something like this.

6. Make it pretty

Rename the installer exe and app files so that they are easily identifiable as the files to click for installation.

7. Make it simple

Use a burning program to create a Mac/PC disc and to make things easier hide Mac files from the PC and vice versa, this will make it a lot easier for users to figure out what files to use.

8. Watch it work

a. If you don't have the AIR framework installed the installer should first run you through that installation



b. Once the framework installation is completed or if you already had it installed the installer should go on to install the application.

That's it. I hope you find this tutorial accurate and simple to follow. If you have any other ways of putting together an installer post a comment and let me know how you like to do it.

Tools of the trade

Houdini

A very useful tool for turning file visibility on and off is Houdini

Toast

There's no getting around the fact that if you're mastering for CD/DVD delivery you will need some sort of burning software. I've been prett happy with Toast.

Known issues

I should note that one of my testing computers, running Windows 2000, was not able to run the all-in one installers although when installed separately both AIR and my sample application installed and ran without any noticeable flaws. I will post update if I discover a more elegant solution than what I have done so far, which is to have a Win2000 install folder with the two installation files.