Upgrading from Tarma QuickInstall

InstallMate 9 is a completely rewritten successor to Tarma QuickInstall 2.x. Even though its overall purpose remains the same, version 9 has many more features and uses a different internal design than version 2 did. The following table summarizes the most important differences.

Project files

InstallMate can open projects created with Tarma QuickInstall 2, version 2.21 and later. When opening a Tarma QuickInstall 2 ("Tin2") project, the project contents are automatically converted to the InstallMate structure and conventions. The original Tin2 project is not modified; when you save a converted project, it is stored in a new InstallMate project file. Tarma QuickInstall 2 cannot handle InstallMate projects.

To support all new InstallMate features, the InstallMate project file format was completely redesigned. The new InstallMate format is based on XML 1.0 in Unicode encoding for ExpertInstall 3, Installer 5, and InstallMate 7; from InstallMate 9 onward, the project file format uses QML, a C-like markup syntax developed internally by Tarma Software Research.

If you used tools to modify the Tin2 project files outside of the InstallMate development environment, you will have to adapt them to handle the new format. The following table summarizes the most important differences between the Tin2 and the InstallMate formats.

Automatic conversion of Tin2 projects

When you open a Tarma QuickInstall 2 project in InstallMate, the project contents are automatically converted to InstallMate conventions. After conversion to InstallMate conventions, you can rebuild your project. The resulting installer should be equivalent to the original Tin2 installer.

The table below shows where the Tarma QuickInstall 2 project pages went in InstallMate. Click on the Tarma QuickInstall 2 links for detailed conversion information, or on the InstallMate 9 links for information about the new project pages.