Re: install of secondary program from perl created .exe

This question is way too vague for us to begin helping you.

It sounds like you want to check for the existence of a particular program at install time and then .. what? Go fetch it? Or put up a pop-up box to tell the user to go get it?

What if the program is installed, but it's not where you were expecting it to be? What if the system isn't connect to the Net? Can the program that's being installed run without this package that you want to download?

What platform(s) are you targetting? Do you have any examples of software you've downloaded that behave the same way? How are you going to do a pop-up box if the software's being installed from the command line?

Alex / talexb / Toronto

"Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds

Comment on Re: install of secondary program from perl created .exe

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Re^2: install of secondary program from perl created .exe by mustangman530 (Initiate) on Dec 20, 2007 at 16:02 UTC
The exe I wrote installs a manual, which requires a SVG viewer to run, with out the viewer it will close. It is ment to run on a windows box and uses IE as it's shortcut. The installer works well but I wanted to know if perl had the ability to launch IE and direct the user to a download site and if anyone knew where i could find information on it.	[reply]
Re^3: install of secondary program from perl created .exe by talexb (Chancellor) on Dec 20, 2007 at 16:08 UTC
OK -- now we're getting somewhere! Yes, Perl can launch an external program, most likely using system. I'm not that familiar with IE, but certainly Firefox can be launched with a URL so that it opens to that location on the web. Again, a safer approach would be to launch the browser with a static local page that has a link to a number of locations where SVG viewer could be obtained -- the machine you're installing on may not have a connection to the Net, and you should plan for that eventuality. Alex / talexb / Toronto "Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds	[reply]
Re^3: install of secondary program from perl created .exe by roboticus (Chancellor) on Dec 20, 2007 at 16:13 UTC
mustangman530: OK, given that information, what I'd do is: Build a web page document telling them the problem, and include a link to the download site. If your program determines that the EXE isn't present, then start their browser with the location of the .html file you included (e.g. "file:///C:/Program Files/mustangman/need_svg_viewer.html"). ...roboticus	[reply]