[wpkg-users] Killing processes (was Re: WPKG Installer)

[rl201]

Hi all,

(Change of subject - thread fork. As Tomasz has already mentioned, this 
isn't part of wpkg installer.)

> How about add a test to the packages.xml format that allows the installer
> to test whether or not a particular process is running prior to
> installing/upgrading/removing a package.  With an option to kill the
> process.  I guess this could fall into the pre command catagory.  But this
> way if needed wpkg can force an update and the program when it's currently
> running.  This can prevent packages from getting half updated before running
> into an can't over writing file error.  Obviously the option to kill the
> process will have to be used carefully.

This is an interesting idea - I would like to make a further suggestion 
that it might be possible to tag packages to wait until a process has 
finished before installing.

Downside: WPKG installation will hang until the process finishes.

Upside: We don't irritate users by terminating their programs and losing 
their data.

I have four layers of 'priority' in my packages:
  900 ish - OS service packs
  700 ish - "Big" applications (Word, Office, AutoCAD)
  500 ish - "Big" application service packs (Office SP3, AutoCAD SP1)
  300 ish - "small" applications (PDF creator, notetab)

I would think that waiting until (for example) word has finished running 
before attempting to patch office to SP3 would be a good thing. It might 
prevent (say) PDF creator from being installed but that's what priorities 
are for.

So, a tag like
<process action='kill'>winword.exe</process>
would cause all instances of winword.exe to be terminated before the 
'install' commands were carried out but a tag like
<process action='wait'>winword.exe</process>
would cause WPKG execution to come to a halt until all windows.exe 
instances had terminated.

Any thoughts?

Yours,

Frank






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