Robert Cowham's Weblog

For quite a while there has been an option to create your own custom installer for Perforce deployments (including automation). This can be particularly useful for larger sites with lots of new users coming along regularly.

The customizable element of the scripted installer is a configuration file named perforce.cfg. The Perforce Administrator edits this file, and places it on a shared network drive along with the expanded contents of the perforce.zip file. Perforce client programs can then be installed by running setup.exe from each desktop.

One of the annoyances with this approach is that you have to expand the .zip file and put things on a network drive. It is not easy to do this sort of thing within a single executable for example (which makes it hard to put on your intranet and get users to double click).

Well, having played around with various installers and options, I have discovered a fairly simple way of doing this via a self extracting executable (SFX), and the open source 7-Zip program.

Instructions

Create a directory structure:

some root dir
- 7-zip - contains a batch file, a couple of config files and perforce.cfg - see below for contents.
- p4winst - contains expanded p4winst.zip (without the perforce.cfg)
- p4vinst - contains expanded p4vinst.zip (without the perforce.cfg)

Currently (as of 2007.2) the perforce.cfg file is the same for both P4Win and P4V.

You need to get a couple of files from 7-zip.org/download.html

Download 7-Zip executable and install, say in d:\apps\7-Zip (as referenced in batch file)

Download 7z Library, SFXs for installers, Plugin for FAR Manager anand unzip to the 7-Zip install directory mentioned above.

Edit perforce.cfg to customize for your installation.

Create a p4winst.conf and p4v.conf (which must both be UTF-8 - Notepad can save this format, as can Notepad++ or other editors) in that directory.

Run make_installers.bat from the command line in the appropriate directory and check that the following are created (which you can put on an intranet or whatever):

p4winst.exe

p4vinst.exe

You can then send your users a single exectuable which unzips itself and automatically runs the perforce setup.exe with the included perforce.cfg - QED!

make_installers.bat

This contains something like the following:

:: Batch file to package up P4Win using .zip file and the 7-Zip freely available 
:: Zip program (which can create SFX - Self Extracting Archives). 

@echo off 

:: May need to customize the following 
set ZIP_DIR="d:\apps\7-zip" 

call :make_install p4winst 
call :make_install p4vinst 
goto :exit 

:make_install 

set INSTALLER=%1 

:: First create new clean versions of the zip files (including current directory version of perforce.cfg in preference) 
if exist %INSTALLER%.7z del %INSTALLER%.7z 
if exist %INSTALLER%.exe del %INSTALLER%.exe 

%ZIP_DIR%\7z a %INSTALLER%.7z ..\%INSTALLER%\* perforce.cfg

:: Copy SFX file plus config file plus zipped installer into a single SFX .exe
copy /b %ZIP_DIR%\7zsd.sfx + %INSTALLER%.conf + %INSTALLER%.7z %INSTALLER%.exe 
if not errorlevel 1 goto :EOF 
if exist %INSTALLER%.exe goto :EOF 

echo *** ERROR: failed to create %INSTALLER%.exe 
goto :exit 

:exit

p4winst.conf (and p4vinst.conf)

These are simple UTF8 format file with contents similar to:

;!@Install@!UTF-8!
Title="P4Win Custom Installer"
BeginPrompt="Do you want to install P4Win?"
RunProgram="setup.exe"
;!@InstallEnd@!