Rebol Tutorial

How to run and wait for an Exe to finish (Shell Command)

windows-shell Askinstall.com is a project which is still in development phase. The aim is to streamline Installation Process from the Internet. Like AskCodeGeneration.com (see “How to automatically generate a Simple VID Form“), it’s very easy to use. For example:

1°) Browse to http://askinstall.com/java, click on “All Installation Scripts”, Choose for example “BlueJ”, Copy and paste the Url (http://askinstall.com/java/bluej/) to the Clipboard.

2°) Launch Rebol Console and type

do http://askinstall.com/do

Note there are 2 “do”s: at the beginning (Rebol function) and at the end (Rebol’s script name).

Update: you can now also type (see tutorial on do/args refinement here):
do/args http://askinstall.com/do "java/bluej"

The script will download BlueJ and then launch the Setup. To do so, it would use Rebol Call function like this:
Call rejoin [{"} to-local-file full-binary-path {"}]
Remark the quote string and the local-file convention: call needs to pass the path using Windows or local OS syntax.

If we ask to delete the setup at the end of installation, then the syntax would use the /Wait refinement (very similar to DOS shell “start /wait”):
Call/Wait rejoin [{"} to-local-file full-binary-path {"}]

It is possible to pass arguments to the shell command line like this
Call rejoin ["explorer /select," {"} to-local-file full-binary-path {"}]
which will open a folder with Explorer and select the downloaded file. to-local-file is a function which converts rebol path to local OS (here Windows) path convention.

You will need to use the Call function quite often if you want to create installation scripts like for Askinstall.com (the site is functional but not opened yet to the Community).