We have a new install project that requires the installation of ApacheDS LDAP and Apache Tomcat. Our developement team would perfer the install to simply use the .zip files that are supplied by Apache and extract them during install instead of the install using the supplied Apache install setup .exe files and calling them as prerequisites.
Since there is no built in functionality in IS 2011 to extract .zip files during install and we are not guaranteed that the user's machines will have an unzip application on their machine that can be called to extract the files we have to supply our own.
So has anyone done this? Are there any recommended extraction applications that we can use in a custom action that can be triggered to extract the files/folders in the .zip files to the correct locations where the files are suppose to be installed/extracted to?
We need a tool that is free and can be called within a custom action.
They want you to use the ZIP file? Well that seems very odd to me. If you extract the files, place them in a folder and run them that decomplicates things a lot and when you create the installer you can make the installer itself compressed if you are looking to save xfer time. I'm just completely confused as to how keeping them in the zip makes it better. I think your developers haven't really thought this out - or just don't understand installations. But - I understand there may be some esoteric reason for this. Enlighten me...
