Call a chocolatey package in powershell based on its package name - powershell

I recently set up a new machine and installed/enabled chocolatey. As far as I can remember I was able to call a package via powershell based on the package name. For instance, if I wanted to install mongodb, I used to type choco install mongodb - and was able to call the mongo client by simply typing mongo in the powershell console. Is there a way to see if something is bound to a specific shim ? or is there an option to enable it?

I don't think there is a way to match packages with shims, but you can check the executable a shim points to, along with general information about it and what would happen if you run the shim:
shimname.exe --shimgen-noop
I tried crafting a command to check all the shims in the $env:ChocolateyInstall\bin directory, but there's no guarantee that executables there are going to be a shim. I tried filtering out the known Chocolatey executables as well, but some packages (like putty) drop their real executables right in the bin folder, and won't respond to the shim parameters like you'd expect.
Looking at the Install-BinFile cmdlet, it doesn't look like Chocolatey provides a way to track shims at all as it doesn't even do this itself. I think it uses the same logic to track automatically generated shims at package uninstall time, but any shims explicitly created with Install-BinFile also need to have Uninstall-BinFile called in the associated chocolateyUninstall.ps1 script or the shim won't be removed at package uninstall time.
Short of crawling the $env:ChocolateyInstall\lib\packageName directory for potential automatic shim names, or the chocolateyInstall.ps1/chocolateyUninstall.ps1 scripts for explicit shims, you're not going to be able to match a shim to a package.

Related

Chocolatey: Make an install script

In order to make install scripts and understanding existing ones, I would like to know what happens behind the scenes of the typical:
choco install notepadplusplus
I found the following here:
Installation
Chocolatey uses Nuget.Core to retrieve the package from the source.
Choco determines if it self-contained or has automation scripts - PowerShell scripts (*.ps1 files), and soon to be open to Scriptcs files in the 0.9.10.x timeframe (I know, right?!).
Choco takes a registry snapshot for later comparison.
If there are automation scripts, choco will run those. They can contain whatever you need to do, if they are PowerShell you have the full power of Posh (PowerShell), but you should try to ensure they are compatible with Posh v2+.
Choco compares the snapshot and determines uninstaller information and saves that to a .registry file.
Choco snapshots the folder based on all files that are currently in the package directory.
Choco looks for executable files in the package folder and generates shims into the $env:ChocolateyInstall\bin folder so those items are available on the path. Those could have been embedded into the package or brought down from somewhere (internet, ftp, file folder share, etc) and placed there.
That given,
How can I get the .nupkg package URL? In general it seems like this:
https://chocolatey.org/api/v2/package/package-name
Which is the .nupkg package download directory?
Where is the content of the .nupkg package extracted by default? This is important since chocolateyInstall.ps1 sometime uses Split-Path -Parent $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Definition.
"Scriptcs files in the 0.9.10.x timeframe" is rather cryptic. Can you give some references?
Is Posh v2+ simply short for Powershell or is a specific technology?
There are several executable files in $env:ChocolateyInstall\lib without a link in $env:ChocolateyInstall\bin. For example, the mpv.exe of the mpv player is not linked.
Yes, that download URL seems correct. The download directory is always into the Chocolatey installation folder, then lib\packageName, and this is where contents are extracted to.
Right now, installation scripts are only written in PowerShell. This comment is referring to the ability to write in installation scripts in C#, using the ScriptCS run time. Currently, this isn't yet supported.
Yes, this is just a short way of referring to PowerShell.
In the case of the mpv package, you will notice that there is an mpv.exe.ignore file. The presence of this file in the package prevents a shim being created.

Getting Install path of a package just installed by chocolatey in powershell

After I install a package in powershell by using
"choco install $package" where package is taken from a config file and would look like "WinRar" so I would be doing choco install WinRar, how do i get the exact path this package was just installed to?
For example when I am installing PhantomJS using this, it gets installed to C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\PhantomJS\tools\phantomjs-2.1.1-windows and I as the developer know that, but since I need to add this to the env path, depending on which version the install command installs, the path will be different. I need to get the exact path so i can set the environmental variable to right place.
PhantomJS is just one example, but a lot of packages get installed into directories where their version is apart of the path and getting the path from the powershell install scripts would really be helpful.
Is there anything like this available for the package manager? I assume figuring out where the package just got installed to should be possible because I see it displayed on my terminal window, just don't know how to access it in powershell.
Thanks.
Currently there is not a way, but there is a thought to maybe provide back a list of package results with that information (along with more). That is still in a feature request so look for it to be developed in the coming months.
You could parse the Chocolatey output to determine where Chocolatey saw things get installed and we are working to make that detection even better.

Configure dependencies in RPM

I have built a RPM-package for Centos 6.6 that is installed on a machine of our customer.
This package contains our own software, customized for the specific use case, but also uses the open-source package HAProxy.
HAProxy (RPM-version 1.5.4-2.el6_7.1) comes with a default-configuration in /etc/haproxy/haproxy.conf and it cannot be customized without changing this file.
But I want the configuration to be part my generated package. RPM throws an error if the /etc/haproxy/haproxy.conf file is in my package, because it is also part of the haproxy-package.
I have worked around this problem by providing a custom upstart-script which starts HAProxy with a different config file, but this does not seem to be the right way to do this.
Is there a preferred way to handle such customizations?
In cases like this, I've created an RPM which installs configuration files into a different subdirectory, and in its %post and %preun scriptlets modifies the uncooperative package's config-files:
when installing, I renamed the original config-files, and made symbolic links from those pathnames to the overwriting config-files, and
when uninstalling, the package removed the symbolic links and restored the original package's files.
Doing it that way of course meant that my config-RPM was dependent on the original RPM. A little awkward to describe, but it works.
In followup, the issue of updating was mentioned. Updating an RPM requires special handling to avoid uninstalling things. The rpm program passes a parameter $1 which you can test in the %pre and %preun scriptlets to notice that this is an upgrade and that there is no need to save the original config-files (or restore them). The rest of the scriptlet would be the same, by copying the new versions of your config-files over the others.
Further reading:
Defining installation scripts (shows the use of `$1)
RPM upgrade uninstalls the RPM
Your approach is correct. On EL6 and sysv there is no other choice than creating custom haproxy package or custom haproxy service or create script which customer runs after installation. I see creating another service as best option.
Note that on EL7 with SystemD you have much better option as you can use Drop-In feature of SystemD. For more information see:
https://coreos.com/os/docs/latest/using-systemd-drop-in-units.html
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/systemd#Drop-in_snippets
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd/User#Service_example
The usual way this is done is to have a drop-in configuration directory, e.g. /etc/httpd/conf.d/, where your package would drop its configuration, and you would tell the other daemon, e.g. httpd, to do a graceful restart in your %post/%postun.
I don't know anything about HAProxy, but a quick search implies that they do not support this configuration directory concept that has been around for many years. A few people have hacked it in, but unless it is out-of-the-box, you will run into your original problem again.

How do I install Perl modules on machines without an Internet connection?

I need to install my Perl-based software on networked machines which aren't connected to the internet. Therefore, I would like to download specific versions and/or latest versions of the Perl modules and I would also like to know if there is an install procedure required for these modules.
Background:
The machines aren't connected to the internet for security reasons and its deemed unnecessary also.
I would place the downloaded modules on a machine that I call the 'install server' and it contains my Perl based software and would also contain the local copies of the Perl modules.
I call a machine that I want to install my Perl-based software on, the 'target machine', also not connected to the internet. There can be several target machines, each can run this software that I want to install. I log onto the target machine and run an install script which would connect to the install machine via the local network to obtain the Perl-based software and dependent Perl modules and installs them.
So I need to know:
How/Where to get specific versions of Perl modules, e.g. CGI.pm etc
How to install these Perl modules. Is it a case of just placing them in a directory somewhere, e.g. a library path and making sure that this directory path is in the #INC library path environmental variable, if it is not already?
I would prefer not to have to do anything like make install etc. as part of installing the modules. I would like to modules to be pre-compiled or prepared as necessary so it is as simple as possible to install them. I want to avoid additional dependencies like make and its configuration, and having to parse its output to check whether it was successful.
Please help me by asking the above specific questions as I am not able to change the concept of 'install machine' and 'target machine' which aren't connected to the internet - I have to provide a solution that works within this arrangement.
The usual way to solve "I want to install stuff from CPAN but without network" problems is to use a minicpan as David Dorward wrote in his answer. But since you're going one step further, saying that you'd rather not do any real installation on the client (target) machines at all, and that you want to use precompiled modules if possible, I urge you to check out PAR and specifically PAR::Repository (server) and PAR::Repository::Client.
Since this approach needs some research before you're up to speed, I wouldn't suggest it for "I just need Foo.pm" like problems. Once you're talking about a handful of dependencies and at least a handful of clients, then it becomes a more appropriate solution.
For an outline of how it works, check out the slides of my talk at YAPC::EU 2008. It also hints at solutions to the bootstrapping problem of making the PAR::Repository::Client module available on the clients (hint: PAR can generate self-contained executables).
You can create a MiniCPAN that has just the latest versions of everything from CPAN. You can insert additional, non-public modules into it with CPAN::Mini::Inject. If you need to greater control over versions (i.e. not choosing the latest versions), you might want to create a DPAN.
With any of these solutions, you can configure your CPAN client to pull from your local source. That could be a directory you know ahead of time or something that you figure out dynamically, like a CD or a thumb-drive. It's just a matter of setting up the configuration correctly.
You might be able to get away with creating operating-system packages for most of your work, but that still means you have to compile them at least the first time.
1) How/Where to get specific versions of Perl modules, e.g. CGI.pm etc
http://search.cpan.org/
If you don't want the latest version, you can get an earlier version by following the link in the breadcrumbs.
http://img.skitch.com/20091209-bu7kt3bj65374k7iijfnhrue2y.png
2) How to install these Perl modules. Is it a case of just placing them
in a directory somewhere, e.g. a library path and making sure that this
directory path is in the #INC library path environmental variable, if
it is not already?
That sometimes work, but you really should go through the perl Makefile.PL && make && make test && make install process.
Doing this would require that you manually chase all the dependencies though. You would probably be better off with something like minicpan.

What is a quick way to run a single script to automatically install missing modules using only Perl core?

I inherited a project which is supposed to be able to be deployed to other servers. This project has a number of simple module dependencies which however might not be present on all target machines.
As such I'd like to be able to run a single command line script that checks which Perl modules are installed and tries to automatically install missing ones via CPAN.
Since this should be very basic (i.e. needing to install stuff to run the module installer would defeat the point) said script should only use Perl 5.8.8 core modules.
Does something like that exist already or would i need to write it myself?
Creating a Bundle package is one possible answer.
You can then look at something like CPAN::Shell (see CPAN module) to automate the process.
/I3az/
Update re: brian's comment about Task:: - Here are some pertinent links:
Writing a CPAN Task (using Module::Install)
"Task:: or Bundle::"? (Perlmonks)
Use Module::Install, it will be bundled with your module/program. You can use "auto_install" command to automatically install dependencies.