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<div>Hi,</div>
<div> </div>
<div> A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I reported a bug and possible solution to Mangoo (<a href="http://bugzilla.wpkg.org/show_bug.cgi?id=123"><font color="blue"><u>http://bugzilla.wpkg.org/show_bug.cgi?id=123</u></font></a>) to counter installers
that generated huge amounts of output and caused WPKG.JS to block up because WScript had limited IO buffers. I’ve just encountered a similar issue, an installer that stopped working because it needed stdout, stdin and stderr to be open for it to write to and
WScript.run doesn’t create those streams. It’s one of those issues where there’s no singular solution but I just found a neat and simple trick that might be useful and I thought I’d pass it on via the list for discussion prior to logging as an improvement.
It was one of those lightbulb, gosh, I should have thought of this moments so it’s bound to be wrong!</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Anyway… If you find an installer grinds to a halt for no obvious reasons try the following;</div>
<div> </div>
<ol style="margin:0;padding-left:20.25pt;">
<li>Create a folder (I called mine “tools” and put it directly under WPKG’s folder)</li><li>Add a variable in config.xml to point to it.</li></ol>
<div style="padding-left:36pt;"><b>e.g</b><b> <variables></b></div>
<div style="padding-left:36pt;"> <b><variable name='TOOLS' value='\\</b><b>myserver</b><b> </b><b>\</b><b>myshare\</b><b>wpkg\tools'/></b></div>
<div style="padding-left:36pt;"><b> </variables></b></div>
<ol start="3" style="margin:0;padding-left:20.25pt;">
<li>Create a .BAT file in that directory with a single line containing “@%*” (I called mine “launcher.bat”)</li></ol>
<div style="padding-left:36pt;"><b>The @ prevents the line echoing to the screen</b></div>
<div style="padding-left:36pt;"><b>The %* </b><b>equates</b><b> to the parameters sent to the bat file</b></div>
<div style="padding-left:36pt;"><b>The</b><b> single</b><b> line effectively silently just runs the parameters you </b><b>send to the batch file</b><b> as </b><b>a command</b></div>
<ol start="4" style="margin:0;padding-left:20.25pt;">
<li>When you encounter a problem command line replace it with a line that “launches” the command through that .bat file</li></ol>
<div style="text-indent:33.75pt;padding-left:2.25pt;"><b>e.g</b><b> </b></div>
<div style="text-indent:36pt;padding-left:36pt;"><b>replace </b><b><install cmd='</b><b>”</b><b><a href="file://\\myserver\myshare\mysoftware.exe">\\myserver\myshare\mysoftware.exe</a>" something' ><exit code='0' /><exit code='1605' /></install</b></div>
<div style="text-indent:36pt;padding-left:36pt;"><b>with </b><b> </b><b><install cmd='</b><b>”</b><b>%TOOLS%\launcher.bat</b><b>”</b><b> ”</b><b><a href="file://\\myserver\myshare\mysoftware.exe">\\myserver\myshare\mysoftware.exe</a>" something' ><exit code='0'
/><exit code='1605' /></install</b></div>
<div> </div>
<div> Hopefully, you’ll then find that some of the awkward installers actually start working a bit more sensibly. It certainly seems to be a bit better to work with than adding “%comspec% /c <mycommandline>” , “start /wait <mycommandline>”” or tacking on “1>nul
2>nul” to the end of commands to avoid buffer overflow. It might actually be useful technique for WPKG to use internally.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Have fun folks,</div>
<div> </div>
<div> Keith</div>
<div> </div>
<div><b>K</b><font size="2"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><b>eith Jones<br>
</b></span></font><font size="2"><span style="font-size:10pt;">Principal Technician<br>
Brighton Business School</span></font></div>
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