Q about SF6...

[k1]

I'm evaluating SF6 and glad to say i like it very much so far.

I have a few Q and problems with it:
1) I get "Registering Fonts" screen hanging for 30 sec or so, on W2K computers, on a very simple installation. (?)

2) How to customize the installation screens (height, width, mainicon, etc...)?

3) When i pass a /SN=1234 for example to the setup.exe it launches the installer in SILENT mode (any switch that starts with /Sxxx)

Thanks in advance.

[Darryl]

Re: Q about SF6...

1) There have been similar posts referring to this problem, although we have not been able to replicate it. Any assistance with recreating this would be helpful in resolving the issue. You can find other posts about this issue at the following URL:
http://www.indigorose.com/ubb/Forum7/HTML/000539.html

If you can recreate this problem every time, we would like to see your project file. You can send it to [email protected]


2) No, you cannot manually re-size the screens that are displayed during the install. They are a fixed size.


3)The following is copied from the Command Reference:

Silent Mode (/S)
You can force the installer to run in silent mode by using the /S option. In silent mode, no screens, errors, or any other parts of the interface will be shown. This includes any messages displayed using the Show Message Box and Yes/No Message Box actions.

Example:
setup.exe /S


If you want to pass values into the install, pass it as:

C:\output\setup.exe SN=1234

Then the value SN=1234 can be accessed through the built-in variable %SetupCmdLineArgs%



------------------
Sincerely,

Darryl Hnatiuk
Indigo Rose Corporation

[k1]

Re: Q about SF6...

Thanks for your reply.
Regarding topic 3, my claim is that this is a BUG.

setup.exe /SN
is NOT eq to:
setup.exe /S

the SF installer is not parsing the command line switches correctly.
to run in silent mode it should check for only "/S" and not a string that begins with /S
Hope this is clear now.

Regards

[k1]

Re: Q about SF6...

Also how to PREVENT setup.exe from running in silent mode?
So the /S will be ignored?

Thanks.

[Lorne]

Re: Q about SF6...

Why exactly do you need to pass "/SN=1234" to the installer, when there is no /SN command line option in SF6?

[k1]

Re: Q about SF6...

Lorne,
I need to launch SF installer (setup.exe) from my OWN application and pass this command line parameters to it.
Then i want to access them via %SetupCmdLineArgs%

for example:
c:\setup.exe /SN=1234 /SUB=1 /SOMETHING=0

etc...

Thanks

[Lorne]

Re: Q about SF6...

Right...but why do you need the forward slash in your custom arguments? Why not just use:

c:\setup.exe SN=1234 SUB=1 SOMETHING=0

If you need to pass those args on to another executable that you're calling from the setup.exe, just convert the values in %SetupCmdLineArgs% into separate custom variables and put the slash in front of the variables on that command line, like so:

/%SN% /%SUB% /%SOMETHING%

If you're trying to pass command line args to your own application and have it forward those arguments to the setup.exe, just strip the forward slashes off the args in your application, or pass the information via the Registry, or use different argument names, etc. (If you know for sure that the argument list will start with /S, you could omit that from the list you pass to setup.exe and add it in with an assign value action internally.)

In any case, I agree that this behaviour could be improved upon; I'll submit a bug report for you.

[Lorne]

Re: Q about SF6...

To make it easier to split %SetupCmdLineArgs% into separate variables, use some kind of delimiter to break up the arg string, like so:

C:\setup.exe arg1;arg2 with spaces;arg3

...and use the Get Delimited String action to split the arg list up.

[k1]

Re: Q about SF6...

Lorne,
Thanks for your quick reply.

I have a situation where we already have a complete application (myapp.exe) that is launching a second setup/update app (setup.exe) and passes this parameters to the setup.exe.
so this parameters are HARD CODED in our first application.

I cant change this parameters. (believe me, I thought if this )

I'm not happy with our setup.exe (made with InstallShiled) and want to replace it with SF.

I also understand that this is a minor (?) BUG.
But, I really depend on this feature to work.
Or at least a workaround to PREVENT setup.exe from running in silent mode?
So the /S will be ignored?

Thanks a million.

[Lorne]

Re: Q about SF6...

Unfortunately there is no way to make SF6 exit silent mode once it's in it...the built-in variable %SilentMode% is read-only.

However, I think that you could make this work using a batch file.

(For the purpose of this explanation, I'll call the program that you need to run before your setup "foo.exe".)

The batch file will run your app, direct its output to a temporary file, and then use the FOR command to strip the slashes from your app's output.

Here's the batch file:

@foo.exe >> C:\tztztztz ; replace foo.exe with your app's name
@FOR /F "tokens=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9* delims=/" %%i IN (C:\tztztztz) DO @setup.exe %%i%%j%%k%%l%%m%%n%%o%%p%%q%%r
@del C:\tztztztz

Name the batch file something like setup.bat and run this instead of the setup.exe.

A few points worth noting:

• This batch file uses the FOR command, which is only available on NT/2k (and XP I think). (I've assumed from your original message that all of your installations will be running on Windows 2000.)
• If your users don't have write access to the root of the C: drive, replace C:\tztztztz with some other filename they'll have access to create.
• If you need to pass more than 9 arguments, you'll need to modify the FOR command in the batch file...do a search if you need to learn more.
• The temporary file is needed to pass the output without having all '=' signs removed. If none of the arguments you need to pass contain any '=' characters, you could remove the need for the temporary file altogether by using ('%1') instead of (C:\tztztztz) in the FOR command, like so:

; batch file if no = chars are passed
;
; call this with strip_slashes.bat foo.exe
;
@FOR /F "tokens=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9* delims=/" %%i IN ('%1') DO @setup.exe %%i%%j%%k%%l%%m%%n%%o%%p%%q%%r

[Lorne]

Re: Q about SF6...

Darn...I just realized that your myapp.exe is probably calling SF6 via an api call. If the filename that it calls is hardcoded to setup.exe...this could be a bit trickier.

You might still get it to work, though, by compiling the batch file with a free tool like Batch File Compiler and naming the compiled file setup.exe (you'd want to rename the actual setup.exe to something else, and edit the @setup.exe in the batch file to match the new name -- before you compile the batch file).

[k1]

Re: Q about SF6...

Good workaround.
I will create a small "wrapper" setup.exe (based on your batch idea)
that will launch setup_main.exe and pass the cmd-line variables.
Hope this BUG will be fixed in the next version of SF, and that there will be an option to omit silent mode.

Best regards, and keep up the good work.

[Lorne]

Re: Q about SF6...

Yeah, we added it to the bug tracking database last week...I've already picked out the line of code that needs to be changed, so I'm pretty sure it'll get done in the next revision.

(Of course, with AMS4 development going full tilt, I think you're wise to go with that wrapper app for now. )