Re: XPI question

[Ian Oeschger]

Hi David - Perfectly OK to write to me, except that I don't know the answer to your question. I know that this level of interaction with the OS (i.e., ShellExecute) sometimes has problems that require special solutions--I am thinking of Python and difficulties that people have with os.system calls--but I don't know what those solutions are, so I am posting your message to the netscape.public.mozilla.xpinstall newsgroup, where the pros hang out.

.io

David Doyle wrote:

Hi there,

I hope it's okay to write to you. I couldn't find any other
address/newsgroup to write to.

I've been working on a XPI installer for a simple installation program.
What I'm trying to do is to use XPI to set off our installer program. Our
installer will then take over and perform the rest of the installation.

The problem is that our installer uses the ShellExecute command to run an
external program ('unzip', in this case). Now, when I run the installer by
itself, everything works just fine. When I run the installer through the
XPI mechanism, ShellExecute doesn't seem to work. It seems that the command
just gets bypassed.

Everything else works just fine. Files get copied, registry entries get
made... It's just this one ShellExecute command that's stymieing me.

I was hoping you had heard about this, or had any suggestions on how to fix
it (or suggestions on other people I should talk to).

Dave