Device creators and application developers can preinstall packages on a media card. When this media card is inserted into a Symbian device for the first time, an installation takes place. That is, unlike a standard installation, this only involves validating the package and updating the SIS registry. Files are not copied to the Symbian device.
You can prepare a media card for installing preinstalled packages in either of the following ways:
Create a Stub SIS file and place it in the media card.
Create a PKG
file of type PA (Preinstalled Application) or PP
(Preinstalled Patch).
The PKG file must include the installation file sections that lists all executables and data files. The source filenames
are not relevant and can consist of empty quotes. The ! character must be used as the target drive letter for all files.
Note: Any FILERUN (FR), FILEMIME (FM) or FILETEXT (FT) statements in the installation package for
a preinstalled application are ignored by the software installer.
Run the MakeSIS tool
using the -s option and specify the PKG file as input.
For example:
makesis -s simple.pkg
This produces a Stub SIS file.
Add the Stub SIS file to the \private\10202DCE\ folder in the media card. This facilitates its detection by the default background process that monitors the media card insertion.
Note: Device creators can implement their own version of this process. This allows the Stub SIS file to be located in a different location.
Add the executables and data files to the private folder in the media card.
Preinstall SIS
files on the media card using the InterpretSIS tool.
Run InterpretSIS at the command prompt and specify the arguments as shown in the following example
interpretsis <options> –s <file.sis> [+<drive>] [+mcard | +mcardalone | +mcardnr | +mcardalonenr]
For more information on the arguments used, see InterpretSIS.
Note: The drive must be defined as an external
type in the configuration file for package propagation to be possible.
Else, the stub SIS file is not generated. InterpretSIS returns an error.