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Technote 007Options for deloying Windows applications silently
Question:What options are available for deploying Windows applications without user interaction? Answer:There are typically 2 options for performing silent unattended installations of software. The obvious and better option is to use the native installer that the application was packaged with to install it; most packaging applications create installers that typically support an option switch for silent installation without user interaction. The second option is to repackage your application, typically with some repackaging program that is able to take before and after snapshots of the operating system and compare them to generate an installation package. Repackaging applications should only be considered as a last resort. You should first try to find out what option switches are supported by the native installer for your application. In many cases, these can be found in the AppDeploy.com Package Knowledgebase. If your particular application has not been submitted by anyone, you may also be able to find or request help at the AppDeploy.com Package Development User Forum. In some instances, you may have no choice but to repackage an application. The AppDeploy.com web site offers a listing of repackaging applications. Before repackaging an application, keep in mind that there are many advantages to using the native installer for your application instead of repackaging it. Repackaged installers are stripped of the logic and intelligence built into the native installer by the software vendor. Software repackagers have the tendency to unwittingly capture file and registry changes that are completely unrelated to the software being installed. Weeding out these extraneous entries can often be time consuming. Because of the inherent lack of logic and intelligence in repackaged installers, you must often build a different installer for each operating system that you want to distribute your software to. Another concern with repackaging is that a repackaged installer might overwrite a shared file (DLL) with an older version of the same file because there are no checks in the repackaged installer to determine if the file already exists. This does not harm the current application being installed but it can often cripple other previously installed applications. Most modern applications today are packaged in Windows Installer MSI format, which supports a standard set of switches. For MSI installers and MSP patch files, LANrev will automatically detect these types of files and pass the /qn option switch to run these installations silently when no command line options are specified. Only if the "Comand line options" or "Executable options" field is left blank will the Execute Windows File command and the Software Distribution Package setup dialog insert this switch for you automatically. If you need to specify additional command line options you will have to add the /qn switch manually in the options field yourself. For other types of installers you must specify the required option switch(es) to execute them silently. If the installer is not self-contained and requires additional files to be present, make sure that these files are located in the same folder as the installer and check the "Transfer all files in folder containing executable" checkbox. Links to the MSI option switches and those for other installer applications are listed below for your convenience:
Windows Installer MSI: MSIEXEC.EXE Commandline Options
Date: 15 Jun 2006 |
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