At times, RAD Studio GetIt-based web installer stops with some fairly vague error message. These can be due to connectivity issues, odd file system configurations, lack of disk space, an existing partial install, and other causes. But some of the error messages like “operation error” don’t explain the cause of the problem. For the future, we are making sure to surface more specific errors, like “Could not create folder xyz”, “Could not copy file foo.dcu to folder bar”, or similar.
For the time being, and in general as a way to better report errors on Quality Portal, there is an undocumented registry setting you can use to enable the generation of a log file with the installer progress (notice, the same log file is used only for installation and manage platform dialog, not when you are installing regular, additional GetIt packages).
After you have started the installation (up to the point of a failure or after a successfull operation) — the configuration setting is read when you restart the process — you can open the RegEdit Windows tool and navigate to a key like:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Embarcadero\BDS\xx.0\CatalogRepository\
where xx.0 is the internal version of RAD Studio, like 19.0 for the most recent version. Under that key add a DWORD value with the name “Debug” and the value 1.
As you restart an installation or restart the IDe to add new features, the system should create a detailed log file at a location like:
C:\Users\Public\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio\xx.0\GetItInstall.log
This helps getting more detailed information in case of error, but also have a full log of a successful installation. The same log file is used over time with more data added to the end. When you are calling support or reporting installer issues, adding this log file can help us identify the core issue.
