Proposal for Property/Response Files reference and value substitutions Draft 0.1 Weijia (John) Zhang Dell Inc

Background and Problem Statement Operating Systems and Application installers use various property files and response file for the installation. These files include java property files, unattend files, kickstart files, inf file, ini files, HPQ package.xml file, and response.xml files etc. In order to use these files natively, the SDD will include information regarding these files

General comments about property and response files The property files and response files are described through AdditionalFile under the InstallationArtifact tag. The AdditionalFile element is not recommended to be used unless it is actually needed. This is because the Additional File referred by the SDD might be removed by the native application installer and maintaining data outside SDD file increases overhead. A property/response file can be considered as a special AdditionalFile that is modifiable with data from SDD.

Linking SDD with the Additional (External) files The linkage between the SDD and the property/response files can be done via the following The SDD pointing to the Property/Response file via AdditionalFile tag. The file location should follow the general URL format. The AdditionFile content is stored in the AdditionalFile element with subelement of Content. The content type is Raw Data in xml. The AdditionalFile element can also contain a pointer to a external file as well as a copy of the content in SDD. If both the file location and the content are included in the AdditionalFile element, there should be an order attribute to describe which source is to be used first.

Name and Value Pair description The correspondence between the substitution name and value can be defined in the element UserName John Smith The substitution name (such as UserName) is the variable name in the property file to be replaced with a value. The value is the actually value. If element is absent, it is considered as a globle replacement and all instances of the Name variables will be replaced by the value.

Language consideration The AdditionalFile element should contain a LanguageEncodingType for the file. If the LanguageEncodingType is absent, the file is considered as an ANSI (or UTF8?) type.

Template Approach of the Additional File The file referred by the AdditionalFile can be considered as a template. The replaceable names can be collected through enumeration of the element. Name and Value pair can be built into a hash table to replace the template of the AdditionalFile into a data file.

Other questions and considerations How to find the replaceable names and values in the template file (AdditionalFiles) and SDD. How to replace it (global replacement or just one time replacement. Or multiple times) Do we need to support Regular expression? Store of inventory result(?) AdditionalFile naming conventions (Do we need to support localized filename?) Do we support remote AdditionalFile location by using an URL? Mapping the name and value can be done by using URL name and value pair. Some definition can be used. Is there a need for a Property/Response file type? Is there a need for Property/Response file version?