Installing to non-default folder

[G_Mugford]

Hi all,

 

Been looking at Ketarin and dipping my toe in. I successfully created download instructions for all of the FileHippo apps I run at home. Even got them to start using standard names each time out. I've written the unzipping batch files for those that simply overwrite existing installs, including saving the .ini file for one zipped app which has a nasty habit of overwriting the ini file I've lovingly crafted for that particular app (Maybe 7zip will allow for the extraction of single specific files in the future, but for the time being, it's copy the ini to old, delete the new ini and rename old to ini in the batch file. If anybody has a better way ... I'm all eyes [G])

 

Now I have to see if this is going to be a serious time sink for me. The key question is whether Ketarin has a facility for installing exe's and msi's into non-default folders. Going back to the times of virii finding particular programs in particular folders, I have always installed into an Apps folder. I continue to do so for shorter path names, if nothing else. And, as it turns out, I installed them these days in E:\apps, which is an SSD.

 

I tried Audacity as an example. I had it save to F:\zKetarin\audacity(install).exe within Ketarin's operations and then I used the custom command of F:\zKetarin\audacity(install).exe and it worked beautifully. IF I had wanted it in the programs folder on C:. It ignored the existing installation in E:\apps\u\Audacity and set it up where it defaulted to. Out came Revo Uninstaller to get rid of BOTH instances of Audacity. Then, I ran the installer manually and put it back in E:\apps\u\Audacity.

 

Which brought me here. Ketarin is obviously an impressive piece of software. And, if nothing else, I could use it to populate and update my InstallPgms folder. (Well, there IS that little problem with download links like: http://www.softwareok.com/?Download=Q-Dir&goto=../Download/Q-Dir_Portable_x64.zip which I can't seem to get to work). But without target folder control, the halved benefit requires I run the installer from outside Ketarin to ensure I get to set the target folder. Nettlesome.

 

So, the question is, do I continue on, or do my own personal habits break Ketarin?

 

Thanks for any feedback, GM

[shawn]

Hi, G! Welcome to Ketarin!

 

With 7-zip, you can indeed extract only one file or only files matching a certain pattern. More about that on the wiki, here.

 

As far as the automated installation destination...it's not really ketarin that you have to worry about, but the individual applications. You can tune the command line for the setup instructions using the same link above, and more here. The thing is, if you're going to be installing in a "silent" fashion or are going to use an automated installer of any kind (including Ketarin), you'll need to dig around a bit to ensure that the installation commands include the custom paths you wish to use. There's a great site that provides the common commandline codes for application installers here. And when in doubt, you can use this to find out what switches an installer allows.

 

As for the download from softwareok - that's entirely manageable with Ketarin. For this type of site you need to view source and see how it operates (in this case, it pushes a redirection around line 166), then in your app profile for Ketarin you need to parse that information either with a left/right or a regex match. For this one I'd use a regex match something like this:

window.location.href="\.+([^"]+)"

 

That'll capture the path to the file in a variable, which, assuming you named this variable "sdownload", you could put in the download box in Ketarin as:

http://www.softwareok.com{sdownload}

 

Most applications that are shared via the Ketarin online database also include the version number and many also capture other details about an application. In this case, I'd capture the version number with this regex, again, using the same page you posted before as the source:

Q-Dir ([\d\.]+)</TITLE>

 

If you have additional questions, it's best to try to create a new thread for each individual request, otherwise it'll get muddled and becomes more difficult to assist. That, and people tend to look at the longer messages like your original post and skip it because they just don't have the time to address *all* of them.

[G_Mugford]

Shawn,

 

Thanks for the full and complete answer. I've quick-looked at the links included and am going to make an effort to move forward. The zip replacement file updates have been conquered and now it's time to approach the rest on a case-by-case basis. The year-end break is coming and for a change, I don't have any massive upgrades due at any of the clients where I program. So I will be able to devout a little time to my own system.

 

You can be sure I'll be back with targetted single query questions as needed.

 

Best of the season to you and yours, GM