DEV03 - Advanced Automated Deinstallation Procedures with WarpIN

Christian Langanke for netlabs.org

Overview

• Software Installer Tasks
• End User Requirements
• System Maintainer Requirements
• General Installer Architecture
• WarpIN - Unattended Deinstallation
• What is required ?
• Implementation
• Standard solution for WarpIN

Software Installer Tasks

• (Un)attended Software Installation
• (Un)attended Software Deinstallation
• (Un)attended Repair of Software Installation
• Identification and Versioning of Software Packages
• Trackkeeping of installed Software
• Detection and Handling of Dependencies between Packages

End User Requirements

• Guide through (de-)installation steps
• Selection of
  • Components to install
  • Installation Target(s)
• Display of
  • Progress of Installation Steps
  • important information (Readme etc)
  • required following steps (System Reboot etc.)
• Provide Overview on installed Software Packages and Dependencies
• Point-and-click Deinstallation of given Software Package by WPS Object ("Deinstall ...") - not with WarpIN :-(

System Maintainer Requirements

• Unattended (de-)installation
• Logging of performed (de-)installation tasks for error analysis
• Unattended enumeration of installed software
• Unattended validation of existing software installations
• Feature to offer user a point-and-click deinstallation

General Installer Architecture

• Commandline and/or GUI Frontend
• Database or file repository containing list of installed Software
  per Software Package
  • List of installed files
  • List of installed configuration items
  • List of dependencies

WarpIN - Unattended Deinstallation

• So-called CID (De)installation possible using WarpIN compiler
• CID response (a.k.a input or control) file (XML format) to be easily created with WarpIN GUI
• For installation and deinstallation the original WarpIN package is required
• But why for deinstallation ? - The WarpIN Database already contains all required information...
• Also WarpIN cannot be called with a package identifier for unattended deinstallation...

What is required ?

• Remember: WarpIN packages contain
  • the WarpIN (pseudo-XML) script
  • the compressed files of each contained package
• a dummy WarpIN package can be used for deinstallation of any software being previously installed with WarpIN
• To keep WarpIN happy, let the dummy WarpIN package contain
• Dummy definitions of the packages to be deinstalled
  • Package identifier must match those of the original package!
  • Must contain some attibutes such as INDEX, TITLE and TARGET
  • No other configuration commands necessary
• One dummy file per package - one zero byte file with any name is just fine
• At least one page definition with any values

Implementation

• GUI program for automatic deinstallation of specified software packages
• required steps:
  • check for WarpIN compiler being installed ;-)
  • perform basic dependency check - WarpIN does no check at all!
  • display security prompt ("Dou you want to deinstall ...")
  • write temporary dummy WarpIN script
  • call WarpIN compiler to compile dummy WarpIN package
  • write temporary dummy WarpIN package and CID response file
  • call WarpIN compiler to deinstall
  • delete temporary files
• Problem to be solved: UTF-8 Character conversion

Standard solution for WarpIN

• WarpOUT as standard component of eComStation
• can be called by Workplace Shell objects, being previously created by WarpIN packages

The End

Thank you very much for your your attention!