Each archive should contain exactly one installation script. If it does not, WarpIN will complain when it is started with this archive as a parameter.

An installation script is a plain text file in an HTML-like syntax which describes the archive (and the packages therein). When WarpIN is started with an archive as a parameter, it first reads the script from the archive to find out more about the archive. What is displayed in the WarpIN dialogs depends on this script.

The script allows you to specify the package titles, dependencies between the packages, packages that are required to be installed already, version information, de-install information, CONFIG.SYS changes, WPS classes to be registered and so forth.

The WarpIN archive creator, WIC.EXE, knows nothing about the format of the WarpIN scripts. It will accept any text file and add it to an archive if you tell it to.

However, the WarpIN installer itself (WARPIN.EXE), does validate the script, both in terms of XML-compliance and for other problems it may find (for example, referencing invalid packages and such).

WarpIN scripts are XML-compliant. For an introduction to XML and tutorials how to create WarpIN scripts, please see the "Writing installation scripts" chapter.