Command Line

[derfsplat]

I am looking to automate patching and updates. I noticed that you can build msi files directly from the command line which is great, but I was wondering if there was a similar way to do this for patches. I noticed in a few posts that you were "working on it." I am using v4.0 of AI and was wondering if there was an available work around for this. If not then do you have a progress update or an estimated date when this would be available so I can choose my course of upgrade authoring (either patches or updgrade msi's).

Thank-you!
-Fred Johanns
East Point Systems
fred[at]eastpointsystems.com

[gigi]

Hi,

You can already build all types of projects from command line. The command line is:

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AdvancedInstaller.exe /build path_to_project_file

For a list of command line arguments that are currently supported by AI see: http://www.advancedinstaller.com/user-g ... -line.html

Many other commands will be available in 4.1 version of AI which is schedule for release about 2 weaks now.

Regards,
Gigi
___________________
Gheorghe Rada
Advanced Installer Team
http://www.advancedinstaller.com

[derfsplat]

I know I can build projects from the command line though I'll admit it had not occured to me that I can build patch projects too. I guress what I'm really looking to do is script (automate) taking my 1.0 MSI and patching it to 1.1 so that I don't have to build the patch project by hand everytime there is a minor upgrade (1.1 to 1.2, 1.2 to 1.3, etc).

Would a generic patch project pointing to somethign like ...\MSIOld\installer.smi and ...\MSINew\installer.msi ( to go from say v1.0 to 1.1) work for the next build if say 1.1 was put in ...\MSIOld\installer.msi and 1.2 was put in ...\MSINew\installer.msi or do you have a better solution? I need a way to automate creating these incremental patches and I'm just wondering what's the best to go about doing this.

Thanks for the quick reply,

Fred
East Point Systems
fred[at]eastpointsystems.com

[derfsplat]

Also, with patches, is there any way to run custom actions? Will the custom actions of the new MSI still be run? A main component of our application is the server which runs under IIS and connects to a SQL back end therefore we will need to run database upgrades as well. If I set a custom action in the new MSI to run a specific .sql script file will it be run from the patch?

[gigi]

Hi,

Would a generic patch project pointing to somethign like ...\MSIOld\installer.smi and ...\MSINew\installer.msi ( to go from say v1.0 to 1.1) work for the next build if say 1.1 was put in ...\MSIOld\installer.msi and 1.2 was put in ...\MSINew\installer.msi or do you have a better solution? I need a way to automate creating these incremental patches and I'm just wondering what's the best to go about doing this.

Yes you can do this by creating the patch with the "Target Image" set to "...\MSIOld\installer.msi" and "Upgraded Image" set to "...\MSINew\installer.msi". Now you don't need to edit the patch project every time you create a new version of your package. All you need to do is to copy both msi (old/new version) in corresponding locations and build the patch with following command line:

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AdvancedInstaller.exe /build path_to_project_file

If I set a custom action in the new MSI to run a specific .sql script file will it be run from the patch?

Yes all custom actions from the new msi package will run with the patch.

Regards,
Gigi
_________________
Gheorghe Rada
Advanced Installer Team
http://www.advancedinstaller.com