[wpkg-users] expand variables in debug output?

[Joe]

Rainer Meier wrote:
>> I had a 1619 error but could not understand the problem since the prior
>> three packages worked.  I finally created a package to dump the 
>> environment
>> vars to a file and then noticed my mistake.  I still don't understand 
>> why it
>> worked for the first three.
> 
> Probably because of quoting - your SOFTWARE variable is not quoted in 
> the last example. This means it might fail if SOFTWARE contains spaces.

That's what I thought but SOFTWARE didn't contain spaces.  SOFTWARE
contained...

\\R4p17\VOL1\apps\WPKG\Programs\

So \\R4p17\VOL1\apps\WPKG\Programs\\thunderbird\Thunderbird Setup 2.0.0.14.exe
was being executed and it worked.  The difference I see is that the one that
failed was using msiexec instead of it's own installer.

> Using
> 
> <install cmd='msiexec /qn /i 
> "%SOFTWARE%\OpenOffice\openofficeorg24.msi"' />
> 
> might help.
> 
> But also this would not be much better to trace if variables are expanded.

At least I would have seen...

msiexec \\R4p17\VOL1\apps\WPKG\Programs\\OpenOffice\openofficeorg24.msi

instead of...

msiexec \\R4p17\VOL1\apps\WPKG\Programs\OpenOffice\openofficeorg24.msi

> In general I don't want to introduce new parameters and switches for 
> every small detail. Else we end up in a total mess of parameters and 
> almost for each WPKG line of code we have a switch to enable/disable 
> something. This is not user-friendly any more. In your case simply 
> inserting a second command (which is for sure executed within the same 
> context) would allow easy debugging:
> 
> <install cmd='cmd /c set > "%TEMP%\debug-env.txt"' />
> <install cmd='msiexec /qn /i 
> "%SOFTWARE%\OpenOffice\openofficeorg24.msi"' />
> 
> br,
> Rainer

I understand, and I appreciate your help.