WPKG 0.9.10 review

WPKG is an automated software deployment, upgrade and removal script for Windows. WPKG can be used to push/pull software packages,

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Tomasz Chmielewski

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WPKG is an automated software deployment, upgrade and removal script for Windows.

WPKG can be used to push/pull software packages, such as Service Packs, hotfixes, or program installations from a central server (for example, Samba) to a number of workstations.

It can run as a service to install software in the background, without user interaction.

It can install MSI, InstallShield, PackagefortheWeb etc. packages, and all other packages using repackaging or some batch scripting (see FAQ for details).

Package definitions are stored in packages.xml, profile definitions in profiles.xml, and hostnames and associated profiles in hosts.xml.

A package is a software entity that can be installed and removed by running a series of command lines. All of those commands must be successful, either by returning a zero exit code, or by returning an exit code listed for the command.

The system keeps track of what versions of what packages are currently installed and what version are available in order to decide weither to install, remove, or upgrade a package.

Profiles denote a certain "class" of workstations, such as departments. Profiles can depend on other profiles, the end result being they inherit all the dependent packages.

Installation consists of copying the wpkg.js, packages.xml, profiles.xml and hosts.xml files to a centralized folder on a file server. The administrator would then define his/her packages in packages.xml, and then define his/her profile structure in profiles.xml. Each workstation would need to be configured to run the wpkg.js command in order to install/update/remove packages from itself.

Logs are reported to the Windows Event Log. These can be retrieved in anyway appropiate for the network.

If you don't like editing XML files by hand, you can use a WPKG web interface.

Considering you are running Samba on Linux, *BSD, Unix or any other Unix-like system, you might have noticed that Windows-administraton things like Active Directory, Group Policies / GPO / Group Policy Objects, RIS, SUS, IntelliMirror, SMS etc. are not available on these platforms.

Software installation / upgrade, or distributing / deploying software to many Windows clients can become painful without some of these Windows-tools.

Once it's installed on the clients, and its configuration is kept on a central fileserver (like Samba), you can easily deploy software / packages / changes etc. to many Windows clients - without the need of doing this manually, that is going from one workstation to another.

You just configure the software which should be installed on a given machine or a group of machines - and next time these Windows workstations are booted, the software you specified is installed automatically.

What's New in This Release:
fixed bug 8
fixed bug 28
fixed bug 29
fixed bug 31
fixed 'reboot="true" doesn't work for upgrade and remove cmd'
lots of code cleanup

Thanks to Falko Trojahn and Gordon Klimm for patches