Unattended installation - specfile edit/modification support

[Gary_Wolford]

When developing an unattended installation, creation of the specfile allows customized installation choices.

Due to the number of choices, I have rerun 2013DS1DVD1_ENG\setup.exe /generatespecfile more than once and NI Device Drivers DVD - February 2013\setup.exe several times to add or remove one or two options.

Adding the capability of loading a specfile when launching setup with /generatespecfile filename1 /loadspecfile filename2 would allow the easy editing/modification of the specfile by the installation creator reducing the time necessary to make a custom automated installation of the NI software.

[WKU_Lab_Support]

Great idea Gary!

I also vote to have all of NI's installers to have specfile edit/modification support.  This would be IMMENSELY helpful with installers that have a huge feature list.

For example, the main LabVIEW Fall 2014 DVD is fairly easy to regenerate its selected setup features.  However, the Device Drivers DVD required a LOT of time to customize the first time I did it.  I have to regenerate that for a couple other academic departments (which small tweaks for each one) and it's going to be a VERY painstaking process to go through the setup features GUI window to re-select the same features as I did last time.

The only workaround I have at the moment is to perform all the feature-selections in a virtual machine, and then save a snapshot in the VM just before I continue onto setup's "Next" step.  As you can imagine, this is not idea.  It would be so much easier to be able to "load" or "import" a previously-saved installation specfile.

thanks,
Scott

[Darren]

Any idea that has received less than 2 kudos within 2 years after posting will be automatically declined.