Distributing Your Application: 2 Package Description File

No matter how you're making your program available, you'll need to provide a "package description file," sometimes known as the . INS file. This is an ASCII text file which specifies important information about the files that make up your program:

Name of the package, which the Install/Remove software application displays to the user
Description of the package, which the Install/Remove software application displays to the user
Order in which files should be installed.
Names and locations of the files on the host machine
Where the files should be copied to on the client phone

This installation order is important in case of interrupted installation--if file A depends upon file B , but installation was interrupted after file A was brought over, but before file B was, then file A won't work, since it depends on an absent file. If another package is relying upon an older, successfully installed version of file A , then you've just broken that other file.

Use the following format when creating the package description file:

The file name must have a . INS suffix.
Whitespace at the end of a line is ignored; blank lines are ignored.
The first line must say "GEOS Package Description File v1.0"
The second line must contain the package name. This is the name by which the package will be identified to the user in the Install/Remove software application. The application doesn't have space for a long description, though--about 20 characters.
The third line must contain a description of the package. When the user views the package in the Install/Remove software application, they may read this description before deciding whether to download/install the package. The application doesn't have space for a long description, though--about 16 characters.
The fourth line must contain the size of the package, (in bytes). This is the combined size of all files in the package. This string must be at most 14 characters long. (Hopefully, this will be sufficient!) When computing the size, don't forget to include the size of the package description file itself. It's all right to over-estimate the size.
The fifth line must consist of a period (.). (This delimiter separates information about the package as a whole from information about the individual files.)
The rest of the file consists of pairs of lines:
The first line of each pair contains the path of a file on the host machine (or within the Add-On Software file, which will be described later);
The second line of each pair contains the destination of the file on the client phone.

The host-machine location is relative to the location of the package description file. The destination location is relative to the base of the GEOS tree.

The line-pairs describing file locations must be ordered based upon the order in which the files should be installed. Libraries, fonts, etc. must be listed before the applications that depend on them.

Sample Package Description File

This example shows a package description file for the Santa package. On the host machine, the package description file is in the C:\NSERVER directory, and the files making up the package are in the C:\NSERVER\SANTA directory. The Santa application depends on the Sleigh library, and the Rudy font; the Sleigh library depends on the Donner and Blitzen libraries.

GEOS Package Description File v1.0

Santa v1.0
Gives gifts.
15769
.

santa\rudy.fnt
userdata\font\rudy.fnt

santa\donner.geo
system\donner.geo

santa\blitzen.geo
system\blitzen.geo

santa\sleigh.geo
system\sleigh.geo

santa\santa.geo
world\extrapps\santa.geo

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