Description:

mkarchive 0.6.0

Mkarchive is a self-executable archive generator for Linux. It generates
an archive in the form of an ELF executable file that, when executed,
will extract its contents to a temporary directory, and then run a
program called setup, which must have been included with the
archive files.
It comes with smartsetup, a utility that will generate a setup
program for you, based on the dialog utility.
You may want to consider makeself as an alternative to this software.

Installing
Mkarchive can be installed straight from PYPI using pip:
python3 -m pip install mkarchive


Requirements
On the development machine, mkarchive requires the gcc compiler
to be in the path, and also libtar and zlib.
On the target machine, it requires bash and libc6 must be the
same version as in the development machine. Also, depending on how you
created the archive, it might need libtar and zlib to be installed.
On a Debian-like distro you may need to do:
$ apt install libtar-dev zlib1g-dev
mkarchive will try to link both libraries statically to relieve the
target machine of this requirement but, obviously, the archive will be
a little heavier as a result.
If you are using dialog or whiptail then it needs to be
installed on the target machine, or you may need to include it inside
your archive and provide a setup program that can find them.


Usage
To simply create a self-extracting archive just use:
$ mkarchive *
This will archive all the files and directories on the current working
directory and create the self-executable archive called selfextract
also on the working directory.
If you want the archive to have a different name or to be created
elsewhere, you can use the --output, or -o option:
$ mkarchive -o ~/extractor.bin *
Note that the archives, as mentioned above, after unarchiving, will run
a user-supplied program called setup that must have been included on
the top level directory.
A minimal setup program could be:
#!/bin/bash
echo "Hello, I'm $0 called with $1 and the working directory is $(pwd)"
We can then create a minimal self-executable with it:
$ mkarchive setup
Creating tar '/tmp/tmpsqwogss0/_tmp.tar.gz'
Creating selfextract1
/tmp/tmpsqwogss0/selfextract1 created with size 104560
Recompiling /tmp/tmpsqwogss0/selfextract0.c
Size of /tmp/tmpsqwogss0/selfextract1 matches 104560
Concatenating /tmp/tmpsqwogss0/selfextract1 and /tmp/tmpsqwogss0/_tmp.tar.gz into selfextract
Adding /tmp/tmpsqwogss0/selfextract1
Adding /tmp/tmpsqwogss0/_tmp.tar.gz
And then we can run the resulting selfextract archive:
$ ./selfextract
Hello, I'm /tmp/selfex__AvVAsz/setup called with /tmp/selfex__AvVAsz and the working directory is /home/javier
Your program will probably need to be a tad more sophisticated than this
one and will use the directory supplied as its first argument to do its
job.
If a setup program is not provided, mkarchive will
supply one for you that just copies the unarchived files and directories
to the user’s current working directory.
Also, in the examples above, mkarchive has found libtar.a and
libz.a on their default locations. You may want to specify a path to
these libraries using the --libtar and --zlib command line
options if you have your own compiled versions of these libraries, or
your distribution installs them at a different location than Ubuntu,
e.g:
$ mkarchive --libtar /path/to/libtar.a --zlib /path/to/libz.a -o ~/extractor.bin setup file1 file2
You may link them dynamically by specifying -ltar and -lz
respectively:
$ mkarchive --lbitar=-ltar --zlib=-lz setup file1 file2

Generating the setup program
mkarchive can generate the setup program for you using the
included smartsetup utility. In order to do that you need to create
a YAML file containing a specification of the installer program. All it
does is to make it a bit easier to write an installer program using
dialog screens.
Basically, the installer specification has two sections: the install
section that contains the screens of the installer, and an uninstall
section. Each of these two sections contain a list of objects that
correspond to parameters of the dialog utility, or a bash code
snippet, e.g:
install:
- type: inputbox
title: Enter input file
text: What file do you want to copy?
store: filetocopy
default: file1

- type: inputbox
title: Destination directory
text: Enter the destination directory
store: destdir

- type: code
text: cp -v $filetocopy $destdir
All types in the type field, except code correspond to dialog
types of the dialog utility, e.g inputbox, yesno, checklist
etc. title is the --title option and text is the text. Other
options can be specified as a list in the options field.
When dialog would write a value to the error stream stderr you
can specify in the store field the name of a variable to store it.
When the result is the program return code, you can check it using
$exitval.
The installer must always define the variable $destdir, as it is
where the uninstaller program (if there is an uninstall section)
will be created.
The dialogs may be shown conditionally by putting a condition in the
condition file. This should be the arguments of the test shell
command e.g:
- title: Installation Successful
type: msgbox
condition: $success -eq 1
text: The installation of $program $version has been successful.


Having mkarchive create the setup program
mkarchive accepts the --install-spec command line option to
specify the YAML file specification.
You can also use one or more --var options to pre-define variables
available to the installer program.
You can use --dialog-tool to specify the path (on the destination
machine with an absolute path, or inside the archive with a relative
path) of the dialog or whiptail command.
Finally, you can specify a name for the uninstaller program using the
--uninstaller-name option:
$ mkarchive --output ~/mysoft_installer.bin \
--install-spec=setup.yml \
--uninstaller-name=mysoft_uninstall.bin \
--var=program=mysoft \
--var=version=1.2 \
file1 file2 dir1


The smartsetup utility
The setup program can be generated independently of the
self-extracting archive using the smartsetup command with options
similar to the ones mentioned above:
$ smartsetup --help
usage: smartsetup [-h] [--name script-name] [--uname script-name]
[--dialog-tool dialog-tool] [--var varname[=value]]
spec

Generate installer/uninstaller scripts from a YAML specification

positional arguments:
spec Input specification in YAML

optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--name script-name, -n script-name
Generate script with this name. Default 'setup'
--uname script-name, -u script-name
Name of the uninstaller script. Default 'uninstall'
--dialog-tool dialog-tool, -d dialog-tool
Name of the dialog tool. Default 'dialog'
--var varname[=value], -v varname[=value]
Define variable and its value for use in the script



License
This software is released under the MIT License

License

For personal and professional use. You cannot resell or redistribute these repositories in their original state.

Share

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter