(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)
Hey j2johnson
Thanks, this is great feedback, and I’m always looking to hear more about how people actually use this stuff.
In our new release of SWD (think it went out yesterday), we will have added some tricks to help maintain custom edits (though this doesn’t apply to tasks you made before this release).
j2johnson
Why is everything wrapped up in .bat files and __move?? How does a .bat file handle multiple install files? For example, install A.msi, wait for it to finish, install B.msi, wait for it to finish, then install C.msi? Why not just stick with the existing download/extract/wait scripting that has been used in the past and that everyone is familiar with??
The main reason these tasks look a little more complicated than a normal hand-made task, is that the wizard is never really sure how the particular installer will work. Many have quirks, or make certain assumptions, that we have to account for. For example, some installers assume a specific relative working directory within the package (./bin for example). If you just move the file to ./bin and use the “run” command in bigfix, the working directory will actually be the __download folder, causing the installer to fail. We package the installer command in a .bat file so that we can have the cwd set to the appropriate folder (this lets us also get away with other tricks for more specific installer types, like spbs)
The “move” code is mostly around reconstructing the package structure on the endpoint, and also allows for some optimization (for example, if a file is used in multiple locations, we will only download it once, and copy it into the proper places).
j2johnson
How does a .bat file handle multiple install files? For example, install A.msi, wait for it to finish, install B.msi, wait for it to finish, then install C.msi
It will execute them one after another. You can think of it as running multiple “wait” commands in actionscript.
j2johnson
Could someone confirm something? If I delete a task that was created using software distribution wizard will it automatically remove the file from the BigFix server?
The wizard keeps track of how many tasks use a certain file. If you have 10 tasks that download a file, only one copy will be stored on the server. If you use the wizard to delete all 10 tasks, then a process on the server will detect that no one needs it any more and will remove it from the server (the process runs periodically, so it might take a little bit before it detects that it needs to remove it).
Hope that answers your questions. Try out the new version of SWD, and let me know if its still falling short in some places.
-Zak