Low-Level Repackaging

MSI Package Builder comes with a wide range of features available for creating standalone deployment packages and repackaging existing installations. Most of repackaging tasks can be easily solved using the smart repackaging modes available in the Repackage Installation wizard, but the program does not put any restrictions on the ways used to for building a deployment package. All the features available in the smart mode can be used both as standalone ones and in a combination with each other while performing a low-level repackaging. Let us take a closer look on what does the low-level repackaging mean and how is it possible to benefit from it.

The advantage of the low-level repackaging is the fact that you are not limited by any single repackaging technique and can combine those techniques to reach the desired goal. For example, you can monitor the installations you want to repackage and then either provide additional changes to be performed to a target Machine during an MSI package deployment, or correct the monitoring results, if required.

When using the feature of capturing changes made to the underlying operating system, you have to prepare the created project before creating a deployment package. Preparation consists of several important steps. First, MSI Package Builder should copy all file system resources to a project storage. If there are any problems during the copying process, the problematic files and folders are marked as missing links. The problems with missing links must be resolved before proceeding with the package generation. For a deployment package to be correctly installed on different operating systems with different environment configurations, it is required to replace all paths that represent the system folders with a special system folder object. All those steps are described in detail within the Projects Preparation section of this document.

When providing the required changes manually, you just create a project to contain those changes, and then provide the changes to the project. Detailed information on providing and modifying the changes is available in the Installation Projects section of this document.

If you want to use wrapping, the packages to be deployed together with an MSI package, those are wrapped packages, are provided in the Wrapped Packages view in the same manner as when performing repackaging via wrapping. For detailed information on wrapping existing installations, refer to the Wrapping Existing Installations section of this document.

As soon as all required changes are provided or the wrapped packages are configured, depending on the project type, you can proceed with a deployment package creation. To learn more about the options available while creating deployment packages, see the Creating an MSI Package, the Creating an App-V Package and the Creating an MSIX/AppX Package sections of this document.

In general, the low-level repackaging is a set of steps to be performed for creating a deployment package that include all required changes and actions. It is really flexible and easy-to-use for those, who fully understand the steps required for performing successful repackaging. Using the available abilities it is possible to perform repackaging of any complexity, but you must always be particularly accurate while using the low-level repackaging in your everyday work.