I have a script which collected together a number of files to be installed. This includes a number of empty directories.
Previously I would use the D flag in the manifest file which would copy empty directories. However due to the way I generate the manifest files (as part of our build process) I can sometimes end up with two D entries with the same destination folder. e.g:
D;${A_LIB}/all/pysys/${PYSYS_VERSION}/lib/python2.7/site-packages;./third_party/python/lib/python2.7/site-packages;COMMON;${UNIX}
D;${A_LIB_BT}/python/${PYTHON_VERSION};./third_party/python;COMMON;${ALL}
This causes InstallAnywhere to fail to build the installer.
To get around this I rewrote the manifest generation code to parse the directories previously pointed to by a D and replace the D entry with F entries for each file in the directory.
Unfortunately this will not include empty directories (which we may / may not need in the installer but in general it's just safer to create them than have some piece of code fail because they're not there).
I've tried the following in the manifest. Reference, Reference3 and Reference4 are empty, Reference2 contains a single directory (which is itself empty). Only Reference2 is present in the install - the other three which are empty directories seem to get excluded.
D,$IA_PROJECT_DIR$/samples/pysys/cor_002/Reference,./samples/pysys/cor_002/Reference
D,$IA_PROJECT_DIR$/samples/pysys/cor_002/Reference2,./samples/pysys/cor_002/Reference2
D,$IA_PROJECT_DIR$/samples/pysys/cor_002/Reference3/.,./samples/pysys/cor_002/Reference3/.
D,$IA_PROJECT_DIR$/samples/pysys/cor_002/Reference4/../Reference4,./samples/pysys/cor_002/Reference4/../Reference4
I've also tried increasing the log level but this has not revealed anything. Is there a way to increase this log level?
export LAX_DEBUG=true
Any suggestions?
DISCLAIMER: I've cross posted this to InstallAnywhere's forums but I will do my best to keep the answers in sync and spread the knowledge.
The solution turns out to be so blindingly simple that I never tried it.
To get EMPTY directories installed by Install Anywhere you have to specify the directories as files in the manifest. So with the following directory structure:
You need to specify the entries in the manifest as F. Specifying then as D will only result in the "Reference2" directory being included.
F,$IA_PROJECT_DIR$/samples/pysys/cor_002/Reference,./samples/pysys/cor_002/Reference
F,$IA_PROJECT_DIR$/samples/pysys/cor_002/Reference2,./samples/pysys/cor_002/Reference2
F,$IA_PROJECT_DIR$/samples/pysys/cor_002/Reference3/.,./samples/pysys/cor_002/Reference3/.
F,$IA_PROJECT_DIR$/samples/pysys/cor_002/Reference4/../Reference4,./samples/pysys/cor_002/Reference4/../Reference4
Sorry to answer my own question, really wasn't the plan!