Did you know Windows includes the tar program?
Daniel Nashed – 1 December 2023 07:12:57
The Domino Language packs are coming in tar format. And I was looking for a way to automatically extract the InstallAnywhere installer for Windows.
It turns out that Microsoft added tar along with other tools like curl.
I did know about curl, but I missed tar. Which can be quite helpful if you don't have 7Zip installed.
The implementation they are shipping is bsdtar (https://libarchive.org/).
It supports to read and write compressed archives with the "z" option.
In the help you see where tar is coming from. It's a pretty old tool coming from the tape area ..
But it is still the standard tool on Linux to pack files.
And it is by the way also supported by Borg Backup https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/usage/tar.html.
You will hear more about this soon, because I am working on a native Domino Backup Borg integration leveraging this new Borg Backup option.
-- Daniel
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1Christian Henseler 01.12.2023 10:32:43 Did you know Windows includes the tar program?
we're extracting the windows LP before deploying it. 270 MB versus 900 MB useless stuff. When deploying on hundreds of servers, this makes a difference.
So, we are not deploying the original Domino Language Pack due to its (over) size.
2Daniel Nashed 02.12.2023 9:52:32 Did you know Windows includes the tar program?
@Christian, I didn't say that the current Language pack is something I like to deploy this way.
Actually I am trying to avoid to install the LP when I can.
- I always recommend English system database.
- When localized templates are needed, I recommend to extract them separately on one server and deploy them from there
- the string resoures on the server for core strings and HTTP are only partially translated. this doesn't make much sense
- the only strings really needed are the XPages string resources, which seem to be installed for multiple languages when you install for example a German LP
- the format of the tar is far beyond from optimal. the InstallAnywhere installer on Windows is an EXE. But on all other platforms it is a bash script with the data packed.
Personally I would wish we would get a different way to deploy localized server templates/resources.
But today the only way to fully automate would be to consume the original cross platform file.
If you have your own deployment, you can optimize the deployment and just send around a file per platform.
My example about tar war mainly to show where you mght need the tar utility on Windows.
There are other use cases. For example if you have a machine where you can't install any software quickly and you need something to pack files ..
-- Daniel
3Christian Henseler 04.12.2023 16:29:41 Did you know Windows includes the tar program?
I was argumenting the way I did, because the background is autoinstall, the (AFAIK) missing feature in D14.0 (but announced for January).
I do understand HCL's position as a vendor of multi platform software, but I would like to have the option to streamline the deployment to optimize the deployment process for a specific environment.
My point is, that I don't want to be forced to deploy binaries for different platforms to a target, that is run on a specific platform.
If a server is run on linux, it doesn't make sense to deploy windows binaries and vice versa.
If you say (as I've understood your comment) "you can only deploy and install the original WebKits as provided by HCL", that would be a reason to not use the feature.
As written in the EAP forum, the changed behaviour of a custom Enterprise install is a step back in my point of view and I need to tailor the installation with tools I expect from HCL, but HCL does not provide the means to tailor the deployment & installation & configuration down to a granular level I like to be able to do so.
As a result, I am not able to use the new Autodeploy/AutoInstall functionality and I have to build it own my own.
But again, that far away from the original subject of your post, I apologize ;-)