SetupCapture will automatically capture system and user Environment
Variables changes that occur indirectly by capturing and comparing
the registry. If an application needs a specific environment
variable in order to run correctly, you can make environment
variable changes prior to completing the setup capture process.
Typically the application's installer should do this
automatically.
To manually add environment variables to Thinstall packages during
the Setup Capture process, use My Computer -> Properties ->
Advanced -> Environment Variables
You can add new variables to either System or User.
Windows stores environment variables on a system-wide and
user-specific basis. The location for these two stores are located
in the following locations.
For packages running under Thinstall, any environment variables
captured in these 2 locations will be applied for all applications
running in the same Sandbox. Per-user values take precendence over
per-machine values. You can manually edit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.txt
and HKEY_CURRENT_USER.txt to add environment variables after the
capture has completed. For example, the following text can be
appended to the end of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.txt to add a CLASSPATH
environment variable which contains the string "c:\mypath"
Note: the "Path" variable is ignored by Thinstall, instead a new
variable "VirtualPath" is used (see below).
The PATH variable
The PATH environment variable is treated differently because
typically you do not want to completely replace the local system
PATH variable, but instead prepend specific values. To accomplish
this, SetupCapture uses a special value called "VirtualPath" to
store the portions of the PATH variable that changed during setup
capture. This VirtualPath will be prepended to the local system
PATH during program execution.