Request for SFX Support.

[James Simms]

We have a need to create SFX files by way of scripts. Once applications are compiled, installers created, post process installer built that chains installers, batch scripts, reg scripts together, we need to package it up into one single executable for easy distribution for techs. Power Archiver allows us to do this by way of the SFX Wizard. However, it will quickly become time consuming, difficult, and impractical for us to manually do this process with the wizard for all of the installation scenarios, especially when a change occurs. It is my understanding this option has been discussed before but was declined to be added to PACL. Can this option be revisited?

Other possibilities…
PowerAcrhiver.exe does support limited command line arguments with an option to make an SFX from a compressed filed. However, it is missing all of the SFX options such as starting executable, destination folder, relative path options…

The SFX Wizard already generates text containing a summary of most of the configuration settings. It would be easy enough for a user to copy the text, save it as a configuration file and pass the file name as an argument into PowerArchiver.exe. This would allow an easy mechanism to get predefined information into Power Archiver without adding a million switches.

[spwolf]

@james-simms thanks for writing to us.

There are some undocumented SFX creation features, I will have to check with engineer in charge of SFX support to see if we can use it right now, or if new support needs to be added.

[spwolf]

@James-Simms we are working on separate tool for SFX, that enables our new format and all the features associated with it (superior compression, security). It is going to take a bit more but it is being worked on. Thanks!