Hi all!

I'm brand spanking new out of the gate so here i go!

I've been using nLite for a little while now and i'm getting ready to do an install where i need to install a metric tonne of drivers, where the drivers are all in installers encrypted in more installers. sounds pretty elaborate.
Those i have a plan for (Can you say "Modified 7zip installer"?)
Others i cant fathom doing by hand, such as CS3, as they require a set of registry keys beforehand. I've tried bootstrappers and they dont work, so i came up with my own!

I present, the Unknown Software nLite Addon Generator!



Its mostly efficient, meaning 99% of it is just writing text files and spawning off other processes and waiting. Its written in VB.NET. This is built for the .NET framework 3.5, as to take advantage of certain functions (like *cough*utf-8 encoding*cough*) that are nessesary for building the package.

My basic idea was that i create a bootstrapper (much like msiexec but simpler) and that would fire off regedit and such. no bacon. I could only get 1(one) copy of the bootstrapper to copy over so i came up with a new idea: Make them look like real hotfixes!
The dissection of a hotfix was a file that kicked off another installer after unpacking itself and running some auxiliary commands.
So I went and found something that could do that: The 7zip installer!
I came accross this site in fact as i was looking for that installer to make life easier. This Post led me to get it, use the LZMA compressor and use it as the stub.

I decided i needed a unique name for the file. NL was obvious as a prefix because its nLite, but what about the name itself? bingo! i can get a very nice fast and easy number from the .NET framework by asking for the hash of the name! Of course, i wasnt going to hide this from the creator so i added the "unique" input -- you can change the "unique" name however you want now. Its auto-generated when you change the name but its a simple hack.

I've tested this pretty well i think, and it should handle the UTF-8 names of files.

Download sauce: nLite_addon_maker.7z
built with Visual Studio 2008 Pro (though it should work fine with the express editions of VB.NET)

If you _just_want to mess with the tool and not mess with the source: nLite_addon_maker_bin.7z

Edit: I take my statement back, i checked the executable for Carnifica's VirtuallTek addon maker and yes it was just a UPX packed AutoIt script. I'm sorry

Can you write some examples of usage for this? I don't see how or why i should need this program.

Thanks!

I acctually have to re-do the algorythm because I went to do some testing and it wouldnt work! turns out I was sending the executable to the copy maneuver and not the 7z archive -- oops...

The usage is 99% idenctical to the old one -- Select a file to add to the installer, say what it needs to be run with and tell it go, tell it where you want it and it churns out a silent installer for use in nLite environments. Its not perfect (it shows a console window if you dont do it right) -- I've uploaded a new version with a drop down box for an unimplimented compression amount for 7zip.

Sorry about the non-functionality!


I'm just now testing an install of universal extractor and ExplorerXP -- and they seem to have installed perfectly.
Here's my directory for them right now: http://sonof.bandit.name/files/?dir=nLite%20Addons

Bump+updated.

This IS a win32 GUI app -- if you want to you can read the source from the first link Its all in form1.vb

BrowserBoxes by the way are a cheap little hack to get a cheap file browsers. Because i couldnt find one in .NET already.

I cant read info about the executable yet but all you _really_ need for a basic installer is the name, filename of the installer and its switches. The generator takes care of the rest. I havent added MSI support yet because of some various problems with MSIEXEC.