Modifying Environment Variables

Environment variables are key-data pairs that are stored in the environment block of each program that runs under Windows. They are most often used by console programs (i.e., programs designed to run inside a command prompt window, rather than with their own graphical user interface), but are accessible to other programs as well.

InstallMate has a full complement of environment variable editing functions, including the ability to selectively replace or append existing variables on the customer's computer. Environment variables are automatically installed and removed with the rest of your application, and InstallMate's Setup program is smart enough to remove only the parts that you added to appended environment variables.

How to specify environment variable modifications

To specify environment variable modifications with InstallMate, act as follows.

Go to the Environment Variables project page.
Right-click anywhere in the list to open its context menu.
On the context menu that appears, choose New Variable.
InstallMate creates a new environment variable. In its Environment Variable attributes pane, set the following options:
- Name - Enter the variable name. It may not contain spaces, tabs, or the '=' character.
- Value - Enter the text value associated with the variable. Use %name% to specify substitutions performed by Windows, or <variable> to insert symbolic variables that are substituted by InstallMate.
- Install action - Choose the appropriate action. See Environment Variable attributes for an explanation of the available options.
- Remove action - Choose the appropriate action. The safest option is Remove partial value; this will actually clean up the entire variable if it becomes empty.
- Separator - Enter the separator character to be used if you selected Prepend to exisiting value or Append to existing value in the Install action field. If you leave this field blank, no separator is used.
Repeat steps 2-4 as required for other environment variables.