Creating a customized add-on installer

The IBM® Lotus® Expeditor framework enables you to create and use an add-on installer as an alternative method for deploying a third-party feature or plug-in to an existing Notes® installation. For example, rather than deploy a custom feature to users as part of the Notes® install kit, or use a widget to deploy a custom feature to an existing Notes® runtime, you can create and use an add-on installer.

About this task

The Notes® add-on installer toolkit provides a streamlined process for creating an MSI installer to deploy a valid Eclipse feature or plug-in to an existing Notes® runtime.

The customized add-on installer tool is available with Expeditor 6.2.1 and as part of a utility directory toolkit available with the Notes® install kit. The notes.addon.installer.toolkit.zip toolkit, which contains CustomizeAddon.exe and AddonConfig.ini, is available in the Notes® install kit's utility subdirectory.

To complete this task, you will use the information in the article Creating a customized add-on installer in the Lotus® Expeditor wiki. While the Notes® toolkit is currently only available for MSI install, a description of how to create an add-on installer in a Linux environment is included in this article.

Note: The Windows section of Creating a customized add-on installer describes settings in the AddonConfig.ini file generic to Expeditor and Notes®. However, the AddonConfig.ini file in the supplied notes.addon.installer.toolkit.zip file has been modified to further simplify the process of creating an MSI-based add-on installer for deploying custom features to a Notes® runtime. Use the information in step 4 for these settings.

Procedure

  1. Open the Lotus® Expeditor wiki article Creating a customized add-on installer.
  2. Unzip the supplied notes.addon.installer.toolkit.zip toolkit to a local temp directory.
  3. Navigate to the local temp directory and open the supplied AddonConfig.ini file.
  4. Add all the properties described in the Customizing the MSI using the Addon Customizer Tool section of the article except the TARGETUPGRADE and TARGETVERSIONS properties. The following AddonConfig.ini file properties have been preset in the supplied notes.addon.installer.toolkit.zip:
    • TARGETUPGRADECODE1 -- This is set to the Notes® Allclient kit value.
    • TARGETUPGRADECODE2 -- This is set to the Notes® Notesclient kit value.
    • TARGETUPGRADECODE3 -- This is set to the Notes® client value.
    • TARGETVERSIONS1 -- This value is preset.
    • TARGETVERSIONS2 -- This value is preset.
    • TARGETVERSIONS3 -- This value is preset.
  5. Move the unzipped CustomizeAddon.exe tool up one directory level.
  6. Run CustomizeAddon.exe as described in the article.
  7. Replace licenses (if needed) in the license directory in the add-on installer kit.
  8. Add the deploy directory and updatesite.zip (for the signed feature(s) that the add-on installer will deploy) to the add-on installer kit as described in the Lotus® Expeditor wiki post.
    Note: If you are using a deploy.nsf, include it in the kit's deploy\extras subdirectory. For information, see the link for Customizing an install kit to set certifier and trust defaults in the related tasks.
  9. Ensure that Notes® is not running.
  10. Run the add-on install kit's setup.exe installation executable and respond to all prompts.