This might be the wrong place to post this question but I did not know where else to post this, so here is:
I am looking for a utility which will let me open the existing install package and let me customize the installation. For example, I have a quarkxpress patch install package and once I try to run it manually then there are two option (install or uninstall package) and you need to select one of them in order to proceed with installation and by default none of them is selected. So that is why when I need a tool/utility to re-package that patch.
Also does anyone know that if i try to push a install package using Apple Remote Desktop, would it use the default setting or does it use some other method to install the package?
Without having the build files for the pkg you can’t really edit the “package” itself (although you can browse around inside a package to view it’s contents).
What I would recommend doing is rolling your own package using either InstallEase, Composer, or something similar. With these tools you set up a workstation and run one of these. The software takes a snapshot of the system. Then you install your application, update patches, or whatever else you want and then run the tool again. It takes another snapshot and finds out what is different. Those different files are then made into a package that can easily be deployed over ARD.
This is a create method for deploying patches/software that don’t come in PKG format ::cough-adoboe-cough::
I have both tools installed on my machine (Apple Packagemaker and LanRev InstallEase) and as you said none of them will let me modify the install package.
Do you know how LANrev InstallEase creates a package? Let’s say if I have machine A with CS3 and machine B with QuarkXpress. Then I use machine A and use LANrev and take a snapshot before I install quark patch and then take a second snapshot and let the program compare those 2 snapshots and then it will create a install package. Is that correct?
Questions:
will it only take the patch files for creation of install package?
You pretty much have it right. It works as a tripwire/snapshot.
So after you do the first snapshot anything you then put on the machine before the second would get added to the package. So in your example.
Machine A has CS3. You run a snapshot - Install a CS3 Patch - Run the second snapshot == You have a CS3 Patch Package.
If you take that and run it on Machine B (The Quark Machine) Machine B will NOT have CS3 actually installed, but it will have whatever files were added in the patch.
InstallEase doesn’t care about machines or what lives on them, just what changes between snapshots.
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To answer your follow up question I don’t know what you are asking. InstallEase is a snapshot utility so it will make a package out of any changes that occur between runs. Wether thats changes from installing a package or application, or just copying a file to the desktop, all changes will (or rather should) be noticed and rolled into the package.