Web Platform Installer v4 command line (WebPICMD.exe) Preview Release

• Published on November 16, 2011 by chrissfanos
• Updated on November 16, 2011 by chrissfanos

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WebPI Command line  

The Web Platform Installer v4 (WebPI) command line tool is now available as a separate download!  We've added a bunch of new features and fix several issues, and we'd really like you to take it out for a test drive!

For those of you who aren't familiar with WebPI, it's a great little tool for deploying your favorite open-source web applications (from the Web App Gallery) and all the necessary platform components required to get you up and running quickly and seamlessly.  Over the years, we've heard a lot of feedback from the community about fully supporting a command line version of the tool - users want to script installs and automate deployment of servers. 

Previously WebPI command line was released as a sample tool on Satish's blog (here) but now we are moving it to a fully supported deliverable from the WebPI team.  We are shipping it today as a stand-alone download but going forward, we plan to deliver it as part of the full WebPI installation (so you'll get both the UX and command line versions with a single install)

Download Links

By clicking the Download link below, you agree to the license terms for the Microsoft Web Platform installer.  This installer will contact Microsoft over the Internet to retrieve product information.

You can download the WebPICMD.exe directly from the Download center here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=233753

Setting up WebPICMD.exe

After downloading the .zip file from the above location, extract the files to a directory. 

WARNING:  If you have WebPI v3 or v4 installed, do NOT extract these files to the existing WebPI directories!  Please extract to a new directory

File                                                                     SHA1

WebPICMD.exe                                                    d6bfcb57462dbb627ebe6743dcff91edc04ea180

Microsoft.Web.PlatformInstaller.dll                          37a9c5596bf457513a19199bfa7383c7ce975c8f

license.rtf                                                             eb1ec85ef007541193e3ea7d243b6ba2f394c929

NOTE:  Please run WebPICMD.exe via an "elevated" (administrator) command window - WebPICMD.exe needs admin access!  

Using WebPICMD.exe

WebPICMD.exe has three main modes of operation that you can use - you specify the mode with the first switch on the command line. 

The three modes are:

/List:              Used to display the list of products available, installed and return information about the various XML feeds

/Install:           Used to install products or applications to your machine

/Offline            [NEW!]  Creates an offline cached copy of a specified set of products and applications so you can install while offline

Let's walk through each mode and describe the command line options in more detail and give a few examples to help you get started!

/List mode

Here's the full set of list mode parameters:

/List /ListOption:[All | Available | Feeds | Installed | Languages]

Let's try looking at the "All" option

This returns the list of installed products as well as the list of available products and applications for your machine

Curious as to what feeds WebPICMD.exe is loading? Let's try the "Feeds" option

This returns the 5 feeds that WebPI is currently loading and the URL where the live

Curious as to what languages WebPICMD.exe supports? Let's try the "Languages" option

This returns the the list of languages and their associated language IDs

/Install mode

Install mode is just that - it allows you to select a set of products and/or an application that you want to install.  This is great if you need to configure a set of machines with the same set of products - WebPICMD.exe will handle only installing the items that you need and you don't have to run the UX each time!

Installing Products

Here's how installing Products works - you just specify the /Products switch and then a comma delimited set of product IDs (not sure which ID to use?  Use the /List /ListOption:Available to see all the available products for your machine

In the above example, we are installing MVC3 and WebMatrix.  WebPICMD.exe will calculate all the required dependencies for both products and install all of them in advance of installing MVC3 and WebMatrix.  It's that easy!

Installing Applications

Here's the full set of install mode parameters:

Required

/Install /Application:<ID or Title>

Here's how installing Applications works - you just specify the /Application switch and then product ID (or title) of the application.

This example installs DotNetNuke - the install will be required to answer all the application parameters inputs during the installation process

Optional Parameters for /Install

The /Install mode has several optional parameters for automating the installation

/XML:<FilePath>                                  Absolute path or URL for the XML feed - this overrides the main WebProductList.xml feed

/Feeds:<Custom Feed URI>                 Comma separated list of custom XML feeds that you want to load in addition to the main WebPI feeds

/Language:<languageID>                      Language of installers to be used. 

/Log:<LogPath>                                   Path to log the results of your installation

/SQLPassword:<password>                  When installing SQL Express, allows you to pass the desired SA password to set

/MySQLPassword:<password>             When installing MySQL, allows you to pass the desired root password to set

/SuppressReboot                                 Suppress any required reboots - the user will need to reboot manually

/ForceReboot                                       Reboot automatically without prompting the user

/AcceptEULA                                       Suppress I Accept/I Decline.  Using this switch is the same as accepting ALL EULAs

/IISExpress                                          Install applications to IIS Express (WebMatrix) - default is to always install to IIS

@[Paramfile.app]                                  Per application answer file

 

Now let's take a look at a few more examples of /Install using some of the optional parameters

Installing SQL Express and passing the SA password

Installing WebMatrix while Accepting the EULA and installing in Russian

Installing an application to WebMatrix

/Offline mode [NEW!]

Offline mode is a brand new feature (so treat it gently) that provides the ability to create an offline cache of products or applications and automatically updated XML feeds to refer to the newly downloaded versions (instead of the live versions).  We also download icons so the experience offline is seamless for the user

Here's how the offline mode works in a nutshell:

1. Run WebPICMD.exe and specify the products you want to make available offline
2. WebPICMD.exe calculates ALL the possible dependencies (independent of what is installed on your machine today) and builds a complete install plan
3. WebPICMD.exe then downloads all the installers as well as the WebPI XML feeds and stores them locally
4. Finally, WebPICMD.exe parses the newly downloaded feeds and: 1) removes all the products not currently available offline and 2) replaces the URLs of the offline products with the new local URI

I'll cover the available options in the current release and then discuss at set of known issues/improvements we'd like to make going forward :-)

Creating an offline cache of products

Here's the full set of offline mode parameters:

Required

/Offline /Products:[All | productID] /Path:<offline-directory-location]

(you can also do a comma delimited list of products)

A word of warning about the "All" option:  It does what it says - it will create an offline cache with everything in the WebPI feed.  That's a lot of stuff.  And it's probably going to take a long while.  Use it with great care.  Especially with a Preview release :-)

Now let's see it in action:

The above will create an offline cache at "c:\offlineCache" that contains WebMatrix and all it's possible dependencies!

Optional Parameters for /Offline

The /Offline mode has several optional parameters

/XML:<FilePath>                                  Absolute path or URL for the XML feed - this overrides the main WebProductList.xml feed

/Feeds:<custom feed URI>                    List of URIs to load in addition to the main WebPI feed for creating offline cache with your own products

/Language:<languageId>                       Languages you want to download (default:  English only)

/Url:<url path>                                      Substitute a URL path (instead of a file path) when creating the updated install locations in the feed

 

Now let's take a look at a few more examples of /Offline using some of the optional parameters

Setting up the offline cache on a file share

In the above example, we created our offline cache on a public server that we can share out with other users

Setting up the offline cache that includes your own products

Now I can add my own products to the cache for use offline

More details about the offline cache

The offline cache sets up a directory structure as described below that contains everything you need to take your installation offline, including a copy of WebPICMD.exe itself.  I'll describe the directories, what's inside them and talk a little bit more about how you might want to use it

/Offline creates four directories when setting up an offline cache:

/bin                                               Contains WebPICMD.exe and the Microsoft.Web.PlatformInstaller.dll

/feeds                                            Contains the modified feeds (shadow-<originalfeedname>.xml) as well as a subdirectory of original feeds

/installers                                       Contains subdirectories for each installer that is part of the offline cache

/resources                                      Contains the /icons and associated subdirectories for each product and their WebPI icon

Take the offline cache on the road with you ... or give it to a friend

One of the key features we wanted to enable for the Offline cache was the ability to put your cache "on a stick" and pass it around to your friends or coworkers.  That's why we have the /bin directory and more importantly, why we introduced the concept of "relativeURLs" in the feed.  If you open the modified XML file and find the first product entry, you'll see an <installerURL> element that contains the full path to the offline cached version of the installer.  But you'll also notice the new <relativeInstallerURL> attribute - this new attribute is a relative path to the installer based on the known directory structure. 

What does that mean?  If you copy the full directory structure (let's say it was on c:\) to a USB key and hand it over to a friend and they fire it up, the full path won't be valid anymore (their USB key will be g: or some other drive).  But the relativeURL doesn't care - it works off the relative paths and installs will still work.  So your friend can use it with WebPICMD.exe! 

(A little side note for this preview:  WebPI v4 Beta (the UX version) shipped in September with an earlier version of the PlatformInstaller.dll, so it doesn't understand the relativeInstallerURL attribute.  So if you want to load your new offline cache XML into WebPI v4 Beta, you'll need to ensure that the <installerURL> full path is still valid.  If you haven't moved your offline cache anywhere, then it's good to go :-)

Enabling WebPI (UX) to use a custom "main" feed

One of the great opportunities for the offline cache is to point the WebPI UX version to the new feed and offer it to users who do not have internet access.  These users will only see the products available offline and can have a complete and seamless experience.  But (as mentioned above) WebPI v4 Beta doesn't understand the relativeInstallerURL and doesn't have a setting in Options to enable a new "main" product feed (you can add custom feeds however).  To enable WebPI v4 Beta to use a new product feed, you'll need to make a small registry update

1. Launch regedit.exe
2. Navigate to "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WebPlatformInstaller
3. Create a new string entry:
1. Type:  String
2. Name:  ProductXMLLocation
3. Value:  <full path to your newly created offline cache "shadow-webproductlist.xml"

Save this and re-launch WebPI and you should see it loading the new feed!

Future features for offline and your feedback

This is the first preview release of the new /Offline cache support and therefore it's not feature complete - below are a list of some features we are considering.  We'd like to hear from you though - are these features important?  What other features should be add?

Features we are considering

1. "Resume incomplete cache" support - if your offline cache creation fails for some reason, we'd like you to be able to resume where you left off
2. "Additive" support - the ability to grow your cache to include new products that you are interested in.  Today, each invocation creates a completely new offline cache directory and doesn't attempt to determine what is already available in your offline storage

What do you think?  Our friends on the WebMatrix team are sharing their UserVoice site to help us collect feedback - you can access that site here: http://webmatrix.uservoice.com/forums/128313-webmatrix-suggestions

Wrap up

If you've made it this far - thanks!  We hope you find WebPICMD.exe useful - we are excited about the new features and look forward to delivering upcoming versions with the help of your feedback!

Thanks

WebPICMD.exe Team

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