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AppDNA Current Release AppDNA 7.15
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Edit an execution profile

Aug 14, 2017

The Self-Provisioning and Install Capture execution profiles differ in that the Self-Provisioning execution profiles store additional text for display to the expert user. In all other respects the two types of execution profiles are the same.

Note: Before you edit an execution profile, Citrix recommends that you create a backup of it. To do this, click Export in the Execution Profiles tab in Install Capture or Self-Provisioning Settings.

To configure an execution profile for use in Install Capture, Forward Path Tasks, or Self-Provisioning:

  • From the Install Capture Settings page or the Self-Provisioning Settings page: Click New or Edit on the Execution Profiles tab.
  • Click the Customize button next to the Execution Profile drop-down list on the Install Capture or Self-Provisioning tab in the Import Applications screen. This edits the execution profile for the current application only.

The Edit Execution Profile dialog box includes the following:

Name – The name of the execution profile. Do not include a colon (:) in the name. This will ensure that the name will not conflict with an internal replaceable defined by Citrix in the future.

Manually execute the commands – This check box controls whether the user must step through the execution of the commands manually.

Commands tab and Replaceables tab – The following sections describe those tabs.

Commands tab

Use the Commands tab in the Edit Execution Profile dialog to view and edit the commands in an execution profile. The top part of the Commands tab lists the execution profile commands in the sequence in which they run. Use the buttons on the right side to add a new command, delete a command, or change the order of the commands.

The lower part of the Commands tab provides detailed information about the command that is selected above. The information is split between the Command and User Interface tabs as follows:

Command tab

The Commands tab shows general information about the command, including the command type, which is either Command Line or Write Unicode File.

The Command Line options are:

  • Command – This must consist of an executable followed by arguments. It can include placeholders called replaceables that are replaced by a value provided at run time. The syntax for including a replaceable is: $(replaceable_name), where replaceable_name is the name of the replaceable (for example, $(AppToolsFolder)).

  • Wait type – Defines the command’s wait behavior. The options are to continue without waiting, to wait for the process launched by the command to finish, or to wait for a process tree to finish. Typically a command that launches an installation waits for it to finish, whereas a command that launches the screen capture utility continues without waiting.

  • Show window – Controls how the window launched by the command is to be shown. For descriptions of the possible values, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms633548(v=vs.85).aspx.

  • Fail on unexpected exit code – Indicates whether the command should fail if the exit code is not as expected. For a command that launches an installer, by default AppDNA considers a non-zero exit code to be a failure. There is an informal convention that installers should return zero for success and a non-zero value for a failure. However, this convention is not followed by all installers. Clear this check box if success or failure is not indicated by the exit code. To set a different exit code, select this check box and then enter the code that indicates success in the Expected exit code box.

  • Expected exit code – This parameter is ignored unless “Fail on unexpected exit code” is selected. This value is the exit code that indicates success. By default, this is zero.

    Occasionally installers do not return a non-zero exit code when there is a failure. When this happens, by default AppDNA assumes that the capture has succeeded, imports the DNA captured, and marks the import as successful – although in fact no real application DNA was captured at all. In this situation, the captured DNA consists of any minor changes that the failed attempt to install the application made to the underlying operating system. When you know that an installer does not follow the convention of returning a zero exit code on success, use this option to specify the success exit code in the execution profile for that application.

  • Capture output – Indicates whether the command writes the standard output (stdout) and standard error (stderr) streams into the Install Capture or Forward Path log. This is useful for troubleshooting command line executables that write an error string.

The Write Unicode File options are:

  • Target file path – The location in which the command creates the file.
  • Expand replaceables in contents – Specifies whether the command expands replaceables before writing them to the file. When this option is selected, the command replaces anything of the form $(XXX) with the appropriate run-time value before writing it to the file. For example, $(AppToolsFolder) is replaced with its run-time value, such as C:\Program Files\Citrix\AppDNA\VM Configuration. When this option is cleared, the command writes the replaceable to the file as it is; for example, $(AppToolsFolder).

User Interface tab

The options on the User Interface tab control how the command appears to the user when it is run in the stand-alone Self-Provisioning tool.

  • Show as step – Indicates whether the command is presented to the user as a step.
  • Allow the user to edit the command before execution – Indicates whether the user can edit the command before running it.

Replaceables tab

Use the Replaceables tab in the Edit Execution Profile dialog box to define replaceable values to be used when the execution profile is run. Any values you enter here override any values entered in the Self-Provisioning page in the Settings dialog box or in the Configure Virtual Machine dialog box.

Note: Sometimes you may want to override a replaceable value entered on this tab for a single application. It is possible to do this for the most commonly used replaceables in the Quick Edit Parameter box in the Import Applications screen.

To specify a replaceable value:

  • If the replaceable whose value you want to change is in the list, select it and click Edit. This opens the Edit Replaceable dialog box, in which you can enter or paste the new value.
  • If the replaceable whose value you want to define does not appear in the list, click New. This opens the Edit Replaceable dialog box, in which you can enter the new replaceable and its value.

The following list shows replaceables that are used internally. AppDNA automatically sets the values of these replaceables and you do not need to do this manually.

  • App:InstallCommand
  • App:InstallDriveLetter
  • App:InstallWrkDir
  • App:Manufacturer (Only used in Forward Path task scripts.)
  • App:Name (Only used in Forward Path task scripts.)
  • App:Version (Only used in Forward Path task scripts.)
  • Capture:ImportInputFile
  • Capture:InputFile
  • Capture:Mode
  • Capture:OutputFile
  • Capture:OutputDirectory

Note: These replaceables have a colon (:) in their name. This indicates that this is an internal replaceable defined by Citrix. If you create your own replaceables, make sure that they do not include a colon in the name. This will ensure that the name will not conflict with an internal replaceable provided by Citrix in the future. The part of the name before the colon provides an indication of how the replaceable is used. For example, App indicates that the replaceable provides information about the application that is being processed and Capture indicates that it relates to the current capture state.