Packaging is the process of turning your application into a stand-alone program for distribution. Packaging is necessary because you program in a rich development environment that contains numerous development tools and other applications. The packaging process produces new image files containing only the objects required for your application. Thus, your final packaged application will typically be much smaller than the development environment. Packaging is also necessary because you are allowed to distribute only some of the applications that come with the development environment (for example, you can't redistribute the code browsers).

You have two main choices for packaging: the simple or the advanced process. With the simple process, you select an application or a configuration map to package, and then follow a few easy steps to produce a standalone runtime image. You control the advanced process from the Packaged Images Browser, which gives you fine-grained control over the packaging process. Most likely, you will still choose to produce a standalone runtime image. The advanced process results in the smallest packaged image.

The third choice is to generate one or more Image Components (ICs) for your application from the Packaged Images Browser. Packaging with image components (ICs) describes the process.

Either way, packaging produces files which encapsulate the coded logic of your application these files together with Files to distribute with your application ane enough to execute your application.