[IronPython] msiexec, Wine, and Exploding MSI Setup Archives on Unix* (was: Py 2.5 bindings for SVN 1.4.4)

[M. David Peterson]

On 7/28/07, Sanghyeon Seo <sanxiyn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> This is getting off-topic, but recent versions of Wine has its own
> implementation of msiexec with compatible commandline.


Good point!  And while the generalized topic of exploding an MSI on Unix* is
really off-topic for even this list (and as such its a conversation we
should probably not continue past this), it does seem worth changing the
subject line to ensure ease of locating this information in the future.

In summary: Apparently msiexec can be run via Wine, and in this regard the
following commandline sequence should allow you to gain access to .NET
assemblies contained inside of an MSI without actually installing the
application associated with an MSI.  In this example this will explode the
AnkhSVN[1] assemblies (which can then be accessed via IronPython, enabling
interop with SVN repositories as a result) into the C:\AnkhSVN on Windows.
 I can only assume that changing this to something like
"/home/<your_user_account>/ankhsvn" should work just as well using
Wine+msiexec**

msiexec /a AnkhSetup-1.0.1.2736-Final.msi TARGETDIR="C:\AnkhSVN" /qn

** Please make sure you fully understand and agree to the various licensing
issues involved with using Microsoft Windows Win32 binaries via Wine.  Not
that this isn't obvious, but its important to make clear the fact that
regardless of the fact that IronPython is open source and liberally
licensed, the Windows binaries are not.

[1] http://ankhsvn.tigris.org/

-- 
/M:D

M. David Peterson
http://mdavid.name | http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/2354 |
http://dev.aol.com/blog/3155
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