Windows 7 software repository

The repository contains a collection of software definition files. It contains all the information Salt needs to install a software package on a Windows system, including the download location of the installer, required command-line switches for silent install, etc.

Software definition files can be hosted in one or more Git repositories. The default repository is hosted on GitHub by SaltStack. It is maintained by SaltStack and the Salt community and contains software definition files for many common Windows packages. Anyone is welcome to submit a pull request to this repo to add new software definitions.

The default github repository is:. The Windows Package Manager is used the same way as other package managers Salt is aware of. For example:. High level differences to yum and apt are:. If using the a software definition files hosted on a Git repo, the following libraries are required:. You can get up and running with winrepo pretty quickly just using the defaults.

These commands clone the default winrepo from github, update the winrepo database on the minion, and install the latest version of Firefox. See here for detailed information on all master config options for winrepo.

This setting is maintained for backwards compatibility with legacy minions. You can change the location of the winrepo directory. Otherwise the software definition files will be unreachable by the minion. It points to the legacy git repo. The default is a list containing a single URL:. This setting tells the winrepo. This a list of URLs to multiple git repos. Specify what references to fetch from remote repositories.

The branch of the git repo to checkout. The default is master. The provider to be used for winrepo. Default is pygit2. Falls back to gitpython when pygit2 is not available. Ignore SSL certificate errors when contacting remote repository. Default is False. Used only with pygit2 provider. Whether or not to allow insecure auth. Used when the SSH key being used to authenticate is protected by a passphrase.

Default is ''. Refreshing the package definitions can take some time, these options were introduced to allow more control of when it occurs. These settings apply to all minions whether in masterless mode or not. Sets the maximum age in seconds of the winrepo metadata file to avoid it becoming stale.

If the metadata file is older than this setting it will trigger a pkg. Default is 1 week. Sets the minimum age in seconds of the winrepo metadata file to avoid refreshing too often. If the metadata file is older than this setting the metadata will be refreshed unless you pass refresh: False in the state. Default is 30 min. The file name of the winrepo cache file. Default is winrepo. The location of the. This allows for using different environments. See here for detailed information on all minion config options for winrepo.

Use the winrepo. This will pull the software definition files down from the git repository. If running a minion in masterless mode, the same command can be run using salt-call. These commands will also sync down the legacy repo to maintain backwards compatibility with legacy minions. See Legacy Minions. This step is only required if you are supporting legacy minions.

In current usage the metadata file is generated on the minion in the next step, Update the Minion Database. For legacy minions the metadata file is generated on the master using the winrepo. Run pkg. The above command returns the following summary denoting the number of packages that succeeded or failed to compile:. This command can take a few minutes to complete as the software definition files are copied to the minion and the database is generated.

Use pkg. After completing the configuration and initialization steps, you are ready to manage software on your Windows minions. The following example commands can be run from the master using salt or on a masterless minion using salt-call.

You can get a list of packages installed on the system using pkg. This will return all software installed on the system whether it is managed by Salt or not as shown below:. You can tell by how the software name is displayed which software is managed by Salt and which software is not. When Salt finds a match in the winrepo database it displays the short name as defined in the software definition file. It is usually a single-word, lower-case name. So, in the return above, you can see that Git git , Nullsoft Installer nsis , Python 3.

The others do not. You can query the available version of a package using pkg. As you can see, there are many versions of Firefox available for installation. From a Linux master it is OK to use single-quotes. However, the cmd shell on Windows requires you to use double-quotes when wrapping strings that may contain spaces. Powershell seems to accept either one. You can install a package using pkg. If a different version of the package is already installed it will be replaced with the version in the winrepo only if the package itself supports live updating.

You can uninstall a package using pkg. It defines information about the package to include version, full name, flags required for the installer and uninstaller, whether or not to use the Windows task scheduler to install the package, where to download the installation package, etc. All files in this directory that have a. The files are evaluated to create the metadata file on the minion. You can maintain standalone software definition files that point to software on other servers or on the internet.

In this case the file name would be the short name of the software with the. You can also store the binaries for your software together with their software definition files in their own directory. In this scenario, the directory name would be the short name for the software and the software definition file would be inside that directory and named init. Look at the following example directory structure on a Linux master assuming default config settings:.

In that directory you see a folder for MS Office that contains all the installer files along with a software definition file named init. The user has also created two more standalone software definition files; openssl. The salt-winrepo-ng directory is created by the winrepo.

It is recommended that the user not modify the files in the salt-winrepo-ng directory as it will break future runs of winrepo.

It is recommended that the user not place any custom software definition files in the salt-winrepo-ng directory. The winrepo. Any extra files stored there will be lost. A basic software definition file is really easy to write if you already know some basic things about your software:. The software definition file itself is just a data structure written in YAML.

The top level item is a short name that Salt will use to reference the software. For Windows 8. Haha that non-JS method is just hilarious.

Thanks HAL!!! This is really, really great info. What is the difference between these? I cannot find any information on this. Which would reinstall a PC by Dell, HP, Acer, etc on a replacement hard drive that would allow the key code to be accepted? There are three key codes. Which ISOs, if any, will match which of these key codes? Microsoft makes this very confusing.

If you can you shed some light on this, it would be very helpful? As these are not required for general users we left them out of the modified script. The standard Windows 7 downloads will cover almost everything including retail and OEM so you can use the key from the sticker.

The only thing they do not cover is the OEM pre installed keys, which if the computer was purchased from HP, Dell etc will be the key you find in Magic Jellybean and is different to the one on the sticker. That is quite correct, I have done similar many times. I appreciate your work, thank you very much :D. Thanks mate, much appreciated. I remember creating them ages ago and yes, I did use ei. DD Lang 4 months ago.

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Leza 3 years ago. Daniel 3 years ago. Umang Garg 4 years ago. HAL Author 4 years ago. John 4 years ago. Hemant Rao 4 years ago. GUest 4 years ago. Mudasir 4 years ago. Omac 5 years ago. HAL Author 5 years ago. EP 5 years ago. Rainman 5 years ago. Vineet Garg 5 years ago. Hawk 5 years ago. Aron 5 years ago. TS 5 years ago. Robster 5 years ago. Sharman Vishnu 5 years ago. Alvaro 5 years ago. Paul 5 years ago. P Richard Yarbrough 5 years ago.

Ash 5 years ago. Slartibartfarst 5 years ago. Austin1 5 years ago. Nubiru 6 years ago. Guillaume 6 years ago. Shuvo 6 years ago. EP 6 years ago. EdiusAltaf Khan 6 years ago. Claar Comen 6 years ago. Arcend 6 years ago. Jill 6 years ago. HAL Author 6 years ago.

Most package managers are designed for discovering and installing developer tools. Ideally, developers use a package manager to specify the prerequisites for the tools they need to develop solutions for a given project. The package manager then follows the declarative instructions to install and configure the tools.

The package manager reduces the time spent getting an environment ready, and it helps ensure the same versions of packages are installed on their machine. Third party package managers can leverage the Microsoft Community Package Manifest Repository to increase the size of their software catalog.

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