Unfortunately, our infrastructure runs on Windows servers and desktops which makes deployments challenging.
Would it be possible to package the RV installer as an MSI? This would allow our sysadmin to easily deploy it to a Windows network as a Group Policy Object.
Ideally, the MSI would also handle registering RV and/or rv:// links via
MSI parameters, something like:
rv-7.2.0.msi /quiet OPEN=RvPushAppend RVLINK=RvExecutable
Hi Katherine,
I am not sure what an MSI is. We do not currently have plans to change our installer, however RV doesn't need to modify the registry except to install the rvlink protocol handler. Anywhere you unzip the installer-less RV download it is effectively installed. You will find a registry stub file in the "etc" directory of that download which can be modified to point to the location you plan to place (install) the RV directory. Therefore the install process on windows could be turned into:
1) Copy the RV directory wherever you want it
2) Modify a copy of the rvlink registry stub file to point to the RV directory
3) Execute the stub file
All of that is silent once you modify one copy of the registry stub file. I hope that helps.
Thanks,
Jon
Hi Jon,
Thanks for getting back to me.
An MSI is a Windows installation package, sort of like a DEB or RMP. It's a particularly convenient way to deploy on a Windows network. We are stuck on one of those and I can't see us being able to talk management over to a linux distribution any time soon.
For examples see:
https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/212475728-Deploy-Slack-via-Microsoft-Installer
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ ("Switching to MSI-format Windows installer")
I'm not sure how big your team is. If you're small, I can imagine this not being high on your priority list. But I'd still like you guys to be aware that there is a use case for this.
Oh I should mention in case it helps, it may be possible to build an MSI that performs the steps you outline using http://wixtoolset.org and the RV zip distribution.
We do not currently have the developer capacity to investigate further, but should we find time to come back to this, we will definitely share our results.
Hi Katherine,
Thank you for the information and links. We were/are a small group, or at least strapped for resources at the moment, but have already made many improvements to our windows installer since we joined Shotgun/Autodesk. We are continuing to address installer workflows and issues, so I will make sure to keep those involved in those projects aware of these requests. I can't give any kind of time table for change though.
Thanks,
Jon
Thanks Jon. We'll see who gets there first ;)