Silent Installation with progress bar

[alibaba]

Hi IA team,

is it possible to show a status dialog for a silent installation. I know it from InstallShield, there you had the possibility to run setup with Parameter /qb (or /qb!) for a silent installation (without interaction) but with a status dialog with progress bar.
If I switch IA setup in silent mode it is always fully silent (like MSI parameter /qn). Is it possible? If not, could this become a new feature for further versions? A lot of our customers are inured to the /qb setup installation and now after we switched to IA they are not amused to see no progress.

Regards,
Alex

[MichaelNesmith]

That's a great question, it helps me praise InstallAware while putting down the competition

The beauty of InstallAware is that nothing is hard-coded...so let's see how we can leverage that in this case:

1. Test the command line for your custom semi-silent parameter, as follows:

Code: Select all

if Variable CMDLINE Contains /qn
  Set Variable SILENT to TRUE
end

This will enforce setup to enter fully silent mode programmatically.

2. At your desired execution point, exit silent installation mode:

Code: Select all

if Variable CMDLINE Contains /qn
  Set Variable SILENT to FALSE
  Display Dialog: customsilentprogressdialog, use as progress dialog (non-modal)
end
Apply Install (or Apply Uninstall)

For added coolness, as in the example above, you could build your own silent installation dialog, either mimicking the standard MSI progress dialog, or making something totally cool

3. After changes have been applied to the system, re-enter silent mode programmatically for the remainder of setup:

Code: Select all

[after Apply Install (or Apply Uninstall)]
if Variable CMDLINE Contains /qn
  Set Variable SILENT to TRUE
end

Enjoy!

[alibaba]

Aah - yes of course. Once more you opened my eyes - Thank you!
I'm just still a bit InstallShield damaged

[bokkie]

...I'm just still a bit InstallShield damaged

Alibaba, thanks for a great laugh. I too suffered collateral damage from a similar experience.

[MichaelNesmith]

[alibaba]

Just for information. The here illustrated method is not working as expected.

The main problem is that if you start a setup "semisilent" you have no progress during unzip dialog because you have to start the setup silent.

If you start the setup non-silent you see the unzip progress dialog but also the language selection dialog box is displayed. It is not possible to hide this dialog by passsing a LANGUAGE variable as it is working in InstallShield.

So for now I cannot recommend this tutorial here since the customer has no progress shown for a long time and may think the setup stucks.

Maybe IA will sometimes follow my feature request to finally support semisilent execution.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6004

[FrancescoT]

Dear Alibaba,

I'm not quite sure to follow your last comment.

For what I see, if the setup is executed "semi-silent" as described with the sample above and due the fact that the SILENT pre-defined variable is set at the beginning of the main script (if CMDLINE Contains /qn), the initialization dialogs are always displayed (including unzip progress dialog and language selection dialog if enabled).

So, the user should see the appropriate progress shown at runtime package initialization.

Regards

[alibaba]

Yes correct, but what I need is the init (unzip) dialog and NO language selection dialog box, this is not possible afaik.

[FrancescoT]

... yes, it is in this way.

Regards