Packaging in the real world
Document Actions
In spite of common guide lines real software packages as delivered by the manufacturers are often not completely parametrizable to proceed without user interaction. And if they are the manufacturer's view of best usage of his software does not always fit to the requirements of an organization. For example, no administrator really likes it if every user has an uninstall entry for an important application in his start menu...
Often only a combined stratey of using different techniques will produce an optimized installation package. For example, in order to reach the desired effects in a certain situation we may
- use wInst commands to clean the Windows registry and the file system of the PC beforehand if an old version of the requested software already exists on the PC;
- call the preconfigured manufacturer's setup program parametrized to proceed without interaction;
- perhaps execute some supplementary software via an AutoIt or AutoHotkey call; and
- finally let wInst do some correction work (e.g. change start menu entries).
Details can be found in the opsi manual and the wInst manual.
A lot of prebuilt opsi software packages for free software may be downloaded from the opsi download server. Other common packages can be subscribed for a small fee from uib, found in the wiki or individually built for you by uib.
