Difference between revisions of "Building installation packages"

Revision as of 09:13, 22 October 2013

Installation packages

The building of installation packages is the last step in building Apache OpenOffice. It takes place in the main/instsetoo_native module. It basically consists of collecting all files that are to be installed and putting them into an archive that can be installed on the targeted operating system. The installation technique depends on the operating system:

Windows

An MSI that is run by setup.exe. The use of setup.exe allows the installation of some Windows redistributables. It is built as loader2.exe in main/desktop/win32/source/setup/. It runs an upgrade instead of a full installation if

• an upgrade key read from setup.ini exists in the Windows registry
• setup.exe finds any .msp files
• there is an instance of AOO already installed and that matches the product code read from setup.ini.

For the download version the msi and setup.exe are wrapped by an NSIS installer.

Linux

A set of RPM or DEB packages that are installed by distribution specific package managers.

MacOSX

A DMG archive that is (can be?) copied into the /Application directory.

Installation packages are created by Perl script main/solenv/bin/make_installer.pl and a larger number of Perl modules in main/solenv/bin/modules/installer/. The make_installer.pl script is run by the makefile main/instsetoo_native/util/makefile.mk.

Patches on Windows

A patch differs from a full installation package in that it only contains the modified files. For the update from AOO 3.4 to 3.4.1 this leads to size reduction of roughly 90%.

On Windows there are Windows Installer patches (or .msp files) similar to installation packages (or .msi files). These are self-contained packages that, for example on double-click from the file explorer, perform the update automatically and without the need for further applications.

Windows MSP updates can have three different types (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa370579%28v=vs.85%29.aspx for more details):

• Small Updates
• Minor Upgrades
• Major Upgrades

As small updates do not allow a change of the version number, a minor upgrade is the one the one best suited for Apache OpenOffice updates. A major upgrade should be used for ?.0 releases. While a major upgrade corresponds with our use of .msi files, the creation of minor upgrades requires additional work. On the conceptual level the creation of a minor upgrade is quite simple.

1. Locate two installation sets, old and new or source and target, both as a pairs of .msi and .cab file. The .msi file is a database with a set of tables that describe the files and registry entries to install. The .cab file contains the actual files.
2. Create a .pcp file that is basically a data file that drives the patch creation.
3. Run the MsiMsp.exe command from the Windows installer SDK. This results in a single .msp file.
4. The .msp can be applied on a computer which has the source installation set installed. The result of that is equivalent to installing the target installation set.

There are a number of conditions that both source and target installation sets have to fulfill. Breaking this conditions may result in very subtle errors either during the patch creation or application. The conditions are defined on values in tables in the .msi files of source and target installation sets:

• In the Property table:
  • The values of the UpgradeCode property differ.
    Identical values indicate the same version => no need to create a patch.
  • The values of the ProductCode property are identical.
  • The values of the PRODUCTBUILDID property differ and the newer value is higher than the old value.
• Adding and deleting files, registry entries, components, features:
  • New files can be added but only to new components in new features.
• Files and Components (and registry entries?) must not be deleted.
  If a file is not needed anymore than it may be possible to set its size to zero instead of deleting it completely.
• For components that exist in the Component table of the old installation set:
  • There is a corresponding component in the new installation set (ie. components must not be deleted).
  • Its ComponentId values do not change.
  • Its Component values do not change.
  • That means that the component names (ie the ComponentId values) do not contain the full AOO version number. Just the major version number would be OK.
  • Maybe: The KeyPath values point to the same files.
• For registry entries that exist in the Registry table in the old installation set:
  • There is a corresponding registry entry in the new installation set (ie. registry entries must not be deleted).
  • The Registry values do not change.
  • The Key values do not change.
  • That means that the component names (both the Registry and Key values) must not contain the full AOO version number. Just the major version number would be OK.
• In the File table:
  • The Sequence values remain identical for files that are in both the old and the new installation sets, regardless of whether a file has changes or not.
  • The Sequence values are unique.
  • Probably: The Sequence values form a sequence without holes.

Current state

The make_installer.pl has some initial support for creating patches. However, this is inactive, incomplete and undocumented and therefore can not be reused.

Necessary changes

The creation of patches consists of three steps that are only run when a new release is made:

• Save some information to the version control system about the installation sets. This information is referenced when the next release is made.
• Read the information of the previous release and make sure that all conditions are met that are listed in the previous section.
• Use the information and the installation set of the previous release to create patch sets. For convenience this step may include automatic downloading of the previous installation sets.