Click on the Build button in the toolbar to start generating the deployment package that will install your software.
You can follow the progress on the Build page. Whenever DeployMaster detects something it does not like, it will issue a warning highlighted in yellow. These warnings do not abort the build process, but they do indicate that the built package will not be in optimal condition which may confuse the user. Fatal errors that do abort the build process are highlighted in red.
DeployMaster uses the LZMA algorithm which achieves high compression ratios thus producing smaller setups that can be downloaded faster. But the LZMA algorithm is quite slow when compressing files. If your PC has multiple CPU cores (and your setup has as many files), DeployMaster will use all CPU cores while building your setup. The build log lists files when they have been written to the final setup.exe. If your setup contains files that are significantly larger than other files, then the build log may appear stalled at certain times while jumping ahead at other times. This is normal. Eventually all files will be written to your setup.exe and listed in the log.
If you requested DeployMaster to digitally sign your installer, which you should, then you’ll need an active Internet connection to successfully build and sign your installer. Digital signatures must be countersigned by a time stamping server to make sure the signatures don’t expire.
You can also build the package from the command line with the /b parameter. Use DeployMasterCmd.exe if you want to add DeployMaster to a batch file or a build process that uses standard I/O.
It’s a good idea to exclude the target folder that you specified on the Media page from your anti-virus or anti-malware solution. It may be essential if you use a custom command line to sign the installer. In that case, DeployMaster writes the setup.exe, closes file, and invokes the code signing command which then tries to append the signature. If your anti-virus automatically scans the setup.exe immediately after DeployMaster closed it then the code signing command may not be able to obtain write access to the file, and fail. But even if automatic scanning doesn’t interfere, it can still slow down the build process. For the same reason, you may want to exclude the folder(s) where your compiler or development tool writes its .exe files, to speed up modify-recompile-run cycles.
If you’re using Windows Defender then you can do this by going into the Settings app in Windows. Go to the Security section and click on “Virus & thread protection”, “Manage settings”, “Add or remove exclusions”. Click the “Add an Exclusion” button to add a folder. Select the folder where your setup.exe will be written. Subfolders of the added folder are excluded as well, so you can select a parent folder too if you use separate folders for different projects. Click the Add an Exclusion button again to add all other folders where you write your own .exe files.
If you need to test how your anti-virus treats your installer then you should download your installer from a website like a normal user would into your usual downloads folder, which you’d obviously not exclude from scanning. Downloaded files may attract extra scrutiny from your anti-virus tool as browsers save downloaded files with the “mark of the web” on Windows.