Automating installations in Windows using Apache ANT

Question

I am carrying out a POC to find a way to refresh a testing server. Refreshing involves

1. Deletion of several files
2. Uninstalling some programs from Windows Add/Remove programs
3. Installing fresh copy of the program (It uses installshield which involves user interaction)
4. Placing some dependencies in specific folders.

While the deletion and copy work can very easily done in ANT it's not the problem. But I couldn't find way to automate the install/uninstall tasks.

Can this be done using ANT? Is there any other alternative?

Answer 1

ANT is a build tool and while many people have successfully used it to automate deployments, you're going to run into issues that ANT was never designed to solve (for example running 3rd party graphical tools like installshield).

The best approach for provisioning target servers are emerging technologies like:

• Puppet
• Chef

Their real advantage is that you can capture your application's environment dependencies and apply these to the target machine prior to deployment. Extremely useful if you want to use virtualize environments for testing.

Finally, I haven't worked with installshield for many years, but I seem to remember it had a comprehensive set of automation options. Perhaps you could use these (from ANT) instead of being forced to simulate a user clicking a GUI