Using MojoSetup. If there are gaps in this documentation, please ask on the MojoSetup mailing list. To subscribe to the list, go here... http://icculus.org/mailman/listinfo/mojosetup ...and then questions can go to mojosetup@icculus.org. This document will be updated as we see what parts are confusing, so feedback is appreciated. Putting together a MojoSetup installer involves five general steps: 1) Compile the software. 2) Set up the installer filesystem structure. 3) Write a config file. 4) Add any localized strings. 5) Package up the final file for distribution. Each step has a lot of details, but all installers basically follow those same basic development steps. Compile the software: You will need some tools. First, you'll need your platform's favorite build tools. You'll also need CMake (http://www.cmake.org/), and a Mercurial (http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/) client. These are all available for most popular operating systems, and some not-so-popular ones. Get the latest version of MojoSetup from Mercurial: hg clone http://hg.icculus.org/icculus/mojosetup Then you'll need to point CMake at it: cd mojosetup mkdir cmake-build cd cmake-build ccmake .. Tweak the build settings to your liking. You'll want to set CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE to MinSizeRel, to make the compiled binary be as small as possible, and then trim out features you don't need. For example, you can drop the HTTP and FTP support to save about 25 kilobytes on the binary. You can also drop support for various archive types, pieces of Lua you don't plan to use, etc. CMake will get you project files for whatever development environment you use (Makefiles, XCode, Visual Studio, etc). Build the project. You should end up with some shared libraries for whatever GUIs you left enabled, and a mojsetup binary. Strip the debug symbols and put these aside for later. If you are building MojoSetup without the Lua parser, you'll want to build the separate Lua compiler (MOJOSETUP_BUILD_LUAC in ccmake). That will produce a "mojoluac" binary. Put that aside for later, too. Set up the installer filesystem structure: This is fairly easy. The installer eventually wants to see a directory tree like this: data/ scripts/ guis/ meta/ This is called the "Base Archive," even if it's a real directory tree in the physical filesystem and not in an actual archive, such as a .zip file. "data" is where the installer looks for files included in the installer itself that need installation (as opposed to those being read from the network or a CD-ROM, etc). READMEs and EULAs go in here, too. The installer doesn't care how things under data/ are arranged. "guis" is where the installer looks for those shared libraries that got built in the first step. Copy them in here, if you built any. "meta" contains installer metadata: graphics for splash screens, etc. It's sort of a catch-all for things that don't fit elsewhere. "scripts" is where Lua scripts go. You'll put your config file in here (config.lua), the translation table (localizations.lua), and whatever other scripts come with MojoSetup, which are required application logic. The installer will not work if you don't include all these files! This directory can hold either .lua files (source code), or their .luac equivalents. If you built MojoSetup without the Lua parser to save space, you'll need to compile the .lua sources into .luac objects now, or the installer won't know what to do with them. It's safe to compile them even if you include the parser. cd scripts ../mojoluac -o config.luac config.lua cd .. You can strip debug symbols from the compiled scripts to save more space, but you'll get less useful information if there's a script error: cd scripts ../mojoluac -s -o config.luac config.lua cd .. Once you finish constructing this directory tree, put it aside for later. Write a config file: This is the complicated part, and where most of your effort will be spent. This document will try to cover all the provided facilities, but as the configuration file also provides a robust programming language, not only is the full scope beyond this document, you can also accomplish all sorts of things we haven't even considered yet. Configuration files are Lua scripts. The Lua language and runtime library is documented at http://www.lua.org/, and they sell an excellent book called "Programming in Lua" which is a fast read and will demonstrate all manners of wild and interesting features of the language. That being said, most people rolling config files don't need any significant Lua expertise, and basic config files don't need any programming experience at all. MojoSetup provides some functions for your benefit, if you want to add any programming logic to your config. These are documented below. The config file is named config.lua, and it must be a text file in UTF-8 encoding. If you are doing any programming, you may use any symbol you like, so long as the name isn't "Setup", "MojoSetup", or any of the standard Lua runtime names like "string" or "table". Configuration files are a hierarchy of elements that take this form: Setup.DataType { someattribute = value1, someotherattribute = value2, } Elements can nest: Setup.DataType { someattribute = value1, someotherattribute = value2, Setup.AnotherDataType { something = value3, } } Case is important! Setup.Option and Setup.option are NOT the same thing! Here are the elements, and the attributes they can possess. There are some specifiers by the attributes: mustExist: Error if is nil (usually if you don't specify it). The other "mustBe" descriptions consider nil to be valid when mustExist isn't explicitly mentioned. no default: This attribute will not have a default if not specified. default X: This attribute defaults to X if not specified. mustBeString: Error if isn't a string. cantBeEmpty: Error is this string is "". String can be nil, though. mustBeBool: Error if isn't true, false, or nil. mustBeFunction: Error if isn't a function (can be C or Lua). mustBeNumber: Error if isn't a number. mustBeUrl: Error if isn't a string that matches the regexp "^.+://.-/.*". mustBePerms: Error if isn't a valid permissions string for the platform. mustBeStringOrTableOfStrings: Error if isn't a string or an array of strings. mustBeSplashPosition: Error if isn't a string in the set of "top", "left", "bottom", "right", or "background". Attributes that aren't explicitly specified take on their default value. In cases without a default, they are effectively set to Lua's "nil" value. This makes boolean values be treated as "false." Plan accordingly. Setup.Package: All configurations need at least one Setup.Package element. Every other element is added under Setup.Package. One full run of the installer is done for each Setup.Package. You can have multiple packages in one file, and the installer will run through for each one as if the program was started multiple times. If there are multiple packages and an installation failure occurs, all successfully-installed packages will remain. In most cases, you only want one Setup.Package and should use Setup.Option to cull pieces of the package. Setup.Package attributes: vendor (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This is a unique identifier for your organization. This should be in the format "companyname.dom" ... the hope is that your primary website is a unique identifier for your company. If your website is www.icculus.org, you'd enter your vendor setting as "icculus.org" ... just the hostname and top-level domain. This is used largely by the OS to maintain packages (Mac OS X application bundles, vendor IDs for Unix desktop menus, etc). This is, in theory, never shown to the user, so you don't need this to actually exist as a website with meaningful content, so long as you can reasonably assure that the string is unique and follows the "host.dom" format. id (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This is a unique identifier for your package. Currently it is used as the base of the install path, but future features may use it for other things. Set this to something short, unique, and human-readable, like "mygame". disabled (no default, mustBeBool) If this is true, the entire package will be skipped by the installer. You probably want this to be true, but you might need to programmatically shut off a whole package. description (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This is your product's name. This will be displayed in the title bar, and other locations during installation. version (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This is the version of this package. This is arbitrary, and doesn't matter to the installer what you specify. It's usually a value like "1.0" or "beta3" The installer may use this for future features, like upgrading previous installations. destination (no default, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This attribute can be used to force the installation into a specific location in the physical filesystem. Unless you are building something very specific (like device drivers for a well-defined platform), you probably should not use this attribute. If destination isn't forced, the installer will prompt the user, possibly recommending locations to him. dataprefix (default: "data/", mustBeString) This attribute can be used to force the installer to pull data files from a location other than data/. The use of the default data/ is strongly recommended; use this option only with great care. recommended_destinations (no default, mustBeStringOrTableOfStrings) This attribute lets you define some favorable places to install the package. You can have a table of strings or a single string: recommended_destinations = MojoSetup.info.homedir, ...or... recommended_destinations = { "/usr/local/games", "/opt/games" }, These strings are presented in the UI to the user when selecting a install destination, but they can override them with their own choice. The "id" attribute is appended to these before displaying to the end user, so they'll see, for example, "/usr/local/games/mygame" and "/opt/games/mygame" ... if a listed directory is determined to be unwritable to the user (lack of permissions), it will be removed from the list before presentation to the user. precheck (no default, mustBeFunction) If this attribute is defined, it is called by the installer after the configuration is parsed and the GUI has started, but before the user has interacted with the installer at all. It passes the finalized Setup.Package table as a parameter. preflight (no default, mustBeFunction) If this attribute is defined, it is called by the installer after the user has chosen options to install. The heavy-lifting of the installer is about to begin: downloading files and installing the Package. It passes the finalized Setup.Package table as a parameter. preinstall (no default, mustBeFunction) If this attribute is defined, it is called by the installer after all needed external files are downloaded and installation of files is about to begin. It passes the finalized Setup.Package table as a parameter. postinstall (no default, mustBeFunction) If this attribute is defined, it is called by the installer after the entire package was successfully installed to disk. It passes the finalized Setup.Package table as a parameter. preuninstall (no default, mustBeFunction) If this attribute is defined, it is called by the uninstaller after the user confirms that uninstallation is acceptable and deletion of files is about to begin. It passes something like the finalized Setup.Package table as a parameter. This function is serialized for later use, in a different program running in a different context: it may NOT use any Lua upvalues (they will be local variables set to nil when the function runs) and any globals you reference may or may not exist when the function runs. Try to do the bare minimum here if you must use this hook. postuninstall (no default, mustBeFunction) If this attribute is defined, it is called by the uninstaller after the uninstallation has successfully finished. It passes something like the finalized Setup.Package table as a parameter. This function is serialized for later use, in a different program running in a different context: it may NOT use any Lua upvalues (they will be local variables set to nil when the function runs) and any globals you reference may or may not exist when the function runs. Try to do the bare minimum here if you must use this hook. postexec (no default, mustBeString) This attribute can be used to chain the installer to another process on a successful installation. The string can contain $DESTINATION which will be replaced with the installation destination. delete_error_is_fatal (default true, mustBeBool) If we cannot exactly delete every file during uninstallation, we will terminate at the very first failure if this is true. Otherwise, we will delete every file we can. updateurl (no default, mustBeUrl) This is written to the manifest files for the aid of external tools, but isn't currently used by MojoSetup itself. splash (no default, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This is the filename of an image file that will be used in the GUI. The file should be placed in the "meta" directory (but you should omit "meta" from this string). Please note that not all GUIs can show graphics, and you must build MojoSetup with support for whatever image format you used for the file. splashpos (no default, mustBeSplashPosition) This is the location of the splash image that will be used in the GUI. Please note that not all GUIs can show graphics, or handle the position requested, but this makes a best effort. If you specify a splash and no position, the GUI is free to place it wherever it thinks is best. url (no default, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) (!!! FIXME) This attribute is for future expansion. once (default true, mustBeBool) (!!! FIXME) This attribute is for future expansion. category (default "Games", mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) (!!! FIXME) This attribute is for future expansion. promptoverwrite (default true, mustBeBool) (!!! FIXME) This attribute is for future expansion. Please refer to Setup.File.allowoverwrite for now. binarypath (no default, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) (!!! FIXME) This attribute is for future expansion. superuser (default false, mustBeBool) (!!! FIXME) This attribute is for future expansion. write_manifest (default true, mustBeBool) If true, MojoSetup will create a hidden metadata directory in the destination folder with lists of all files installed and some other pertinent facts about the installed package. This allows other tools to operate on the installation later, such as a software updater program or an uninstaller. MojoSetup will also install tools in the metadata directory to aid in manifest management and uninstallation. Unless your package is a well-defined, static installation, you probably want this. It adds a couple hundred kilobytes to the final install in the filesystem (but not your download package), and puts an extra directory in there (Usually called ".mojosetup", and hidden from the end-user). support_uninstall (default true, mustBeBool) If true, MojoSetup will include a means for the end-user to uninstall this package. On Unix, this takes the form of a shell script in the destination folder, on Windows, this hooks your package into the "Add/Remove Programs" control panel. If you enable support_uninstall, you must enable write_manifest, or the installer will refuse to run to alert you to the problem immediately. Please note that if you haven't anything outside the destination folder to clean up, uninstall is merely a user-friendly formality; MojoSetup doesn't implicitly write anything to the system outside this folder, so the user can just drag it to the trash in the basic usage scenario. Indeed, on Mac OS X, this is Apple's recommended "uninstall" procedure. On Windows, hooking into Add/Remove Programs is probably desirable in all cases. Enabling this option adds very little overhead to the normal install, once you swallow the cost from write_manifest. Setup.Eula: This element can be a child of Setup.Package or Setup.Option. It can be used to display a license agreement to the end user, which they must agree to before installation can proceed. If they refuse the license, the installer terminates without installing anything (or, in the Setup.Option case, steps back in the installation to let them change options, so they can disable the installation of whatever they disagree with). There can be multiple Setup.Eula elements listed, in which case the end user will be asked to agree to each license individually before installation may proceed. The Setup.Package licenses are shown first before any other interaction occurs, and the Setup.Option licenses are shown after the user selects her install options. Setup.Eula attributes: description (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This is a brief description of the license, used for title bars and such. source (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This is a filename in the Base Archive's "data" directory that contains the license text. Currently this must be a text file in UTF-8 encoding. accept_not_needed (false, mustBeBool) If true, then the user does not have to explicitly accept the EULA. Setup.Readme: This element is a child of Setup.Package. It can be used to display a information about the package to the end user, such as a welcome message, FAQs, or other orientation information. There can be multiple Setup.Readme elements listed, in which case the end user will be shown each readme individually before installation may proceed. The readmes are shown after any EULA elements in the Setup.Package. EULA elements in a Setup.Option are shown later, however. Setup.Readme attributes: description (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This is a brief description of the Readme, used for title bars and such. source (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This is a filename in the Base Archive's "data" directory that contains the readme text. Currently this must be a text file in UTF-8 encoding. Setup.ProductKey: This element can be a child of Setup.Package or Setup.Option. It can be used to prompt the user for a "CD key" or some other sort of code that is required to install the product. If they can't enter a valid key, the installer terminates without installing anything (or, in the Setup.Option case, steps back in the installation to let them change options, so they can disable the installation of whatever they don't have keys for). There can be multiple Setup.ProductKey elements listed, in which case the end user will be asked to enter each key individually before installation may proceed. The Setup.Package keys are requested after any global EULAs are agreed to, and the Setup.Option keys are requested after any per-option EULAs. Setup.ProductKey attributes: description (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This is a brief description of the key being requested, used for title bars and such. format (no default, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This specifies the exact format a key must be. This is a string of characters. The GUI will not allow the user to continue until they either enter a string that matches this format or abort entry. The following characters are acceptable in a format string: 'X', '#', ' ', '-', '?', '*' 'X' means "any letter." '#' means "any number." '?' means "any letter or number." '*' means "any character." ' ' and '-' specify new blocks of text. Obviously, these are not regular expressions, or filename-style wildcards. For example, if you expect a valid product key to be four segments of four numbers, followed by two letters, your format would be this: ####-####-####-#### XX '-' and ' ' are optional. The GUI may be able to optimize for these cases, such as splitting input into separate text boxes. Users won't have to enter these characters; MojoSetup will fill them in if they are missing. If no format is specified, the user may enter any string. verify (no default, nil, mustBeFunction) This function is called after the user finishes typing in their key. It allows the installer to verify that the key is valid before continuing. The function returns true or false, and maybe optionally return a second value that transforms the key, perhaps to encrypt it before writing it to disk. Here is a very basic example function in Lua: local function verify_cdkey(key) if key == "this-is-a-valid-cdkey" then -- You could just "return true" too, to not change the key. return true, key .. "-some-extra-junk-on-the-end" end return false end One could also call into a C function, which can be handy to reuse the same key validation routines that your installed application would use. MojoSetup's license allows for you to statically link such code without releasing the source code to it. To do so, please see the function luahook_verifyproductkey() in lua_glue.c, and change it to fit your needs. If no verify function is specified, no verification occurs; MojoSetup assumes that whatever the user entered is okay, only making sure it matched the specified format. In the case of a successful verification, MojoSetup will quietly continue on. If you wish to say something to the user here, such as: "don't tell anyone your CD key, we will never ask you for it," then you should call MojoSetup.msgbox() before returning from your verify function (or, in C code: GGui->msgbox("window title", "message to show"). destination (no default, nil, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This is where MojoSetup should write the product key. It will be a text file with the final ASCII key string. If no destination is specified, the product key is not written to disk. This may be desirable if the installer just needs to make sure a key is available and valid. On Windows, the destination is allowed to use a magic format for targeting a specific key in the Windows Registry instead of a file, such as: "$WINDOWSREGISTRY/HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/MyApp/ProductKey" Setup.Media: This element is required if you need to install data from removable media, such as a DVD-ROM drive. The installer needs a means to identify the media as the correct source when it is connected to the system. Setup.Media attributes: id (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) A unique specifier for this media, such as "disc1" or "game-disc". This will be used for Setup.File.source: "media://game-disc/path/filename.zip" description (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) A human-readable description of this media, such as "MyGame Disc 2". This string will be used when the end user must be prompted to insert a new piece of media to continue the installation. uniquefile (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This is a path that is unique to this media, relative to its root directory, such as "sounds/guitar.wav". The installer looks at all media available to the system until it finds this path exists, to determine if the correct media has been made available by the end user. Setup.Option: This element defines an optional section of the install, and is a child of Setup.Package. You must have at least one Setup.Option in your configuration, but you can make it mandatory with the "required" attribute if you don't want it to be actually optional. The GUI will show all selectable options to the end user, and they can pick and choose the parts they want. If there are no optional portions of the install, the GUI will skip the option selection screen. Setup.Options can nest. If a parent option is unchecked in the GUI, its child options become disabled and will be considered unchecked also when installation proceeds. Setup.Option { description = "Wing Commander 1" source = "base:///wc1.zip", -- This option can only install if "Wing Commander 1" is checked too. Setup.Option { description = "WC1 Speech Pack", source = "base:///wc1sp.zip", }, }, Setup.Option attributes: disabled (default false, mustBeBool) If true, this whole group (including all children) will be removed from the GUI, and the installer will treat all the child options as unchecked. If an option has both "required" and "disabled" set to true, then "disabled" takes precedence. value (default false, mustBeBool) If true, the checkbox will be checked by default in the GUI. Checked options are installed. required (default false, mustBeBool) If true, the option won't be shown to the end user, but will just be treated as if it was checked when installation proceeds. If an option has both "required" and "disabled" set to true, then "disabled" takes precedence. bytes (no default, mustExist, mustBeNumber) This is the size, in bytes, of files this option will write to disk. The installer uses this to determine space requirements for the total install. If you don't know the size, you should set this to -1, but this will disable some functionality. description (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This string will be shown to the end user, as a label with the GUI's checkbox. tooltip (no default, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This string will be used in mouseover "tooltips" in GUI environments for this option's UI widget. There is no guarantee that they will be shown to a user in any GUI target, so don't rely on them! Setup.OptionGroup: This element can be the parent or child of Setup.Option, or a child of Setup.Package. It contains of a collection of Setup.Option elements. The children Setup.Options will be grouped radio buttons in the GUI instead of individual checkboxes. As such, only one child Setup.Option in an Setup.OptionGroup will be checked in the GUI. Setup.OptionGroup { description = "Language", Setup.Option { description = "English", source = "base:///en.zip" }, Setup.Option { description = "French", source = "base:///fr.zip" }, Setup.Option { description = "German", source = "base:///fr.zip" }, }, Setup.OptionGroup attributes: disabled (no default, mustBeBool) If true, this option (including all children) will be removed from the GUI, and the installer will treat this and all child options as unchecked. description (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This string will be shown to the end user, as a label with the GUI's radio button group. tooltip (no default, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This string will be used in mouseover "tooltips" in GUI environments for this option's UI widget. There is no guarantee that they will be shown to a user in any GUI target, so don't rely on them! Setup.File: This element specifies a fileset, a collection of files, to install. These are children of Setup.Option, and you can specify as many as you like per option. Each Setup.File represents an "archive," that is, some set of files, such as a .zip file or a directory. Setup.File attributes: source (no default, mustBeUrl) This is a URL that provides the source for this fileset. You can only specify archives (directories and files like .zip, .tar, etc), not specific individual files. If you need a specific file, use its parent directory here and a "wildcards" attribute. There are some standard and non-standard URL handlers you can specify: base:///path/file.ext This references an archive in the Base Archive, where the "data" directory is the root...so the above looks for data/path/file.ext in the Base Archive. This can install from an archive inside an archive, like this: base:///mydir/outside.zip/internalpath/inside.tar media://id/path/file.ext This references a file on an external media with a specific id, as defined in a Setup.Media element. The user will be prompted for the correct media if the installer can't find it. This can install archives-in-archives, like the base:/// version can. ftp://hostname.dom/path/file.ext http://hostname.dom/path/file.ext The references a file on an FTP or web server. These files will all be downloaded before local files are installed. You may only specify archives at this time, not individual files or directories. MojoSetup must be built with support for the proper network protocol. destination (no default, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This attribute lets you, across the board, redirect files in this archive to a specific destination. This is a path relative to the base of the installation destination path. If the user specified an installation destination of "/games/mygame", this attribute is "gamemod", and the source produces a file "maps/level1.map", then the final file written to disk would be "/games/mygame/gamemod/maps/level1.map". After the path is prepared with this attribute, it is tested against the "wildcards" attribute, and if it passes there, it is pushed through the "filter" attribute. wildcards (no default, mustBeStringOrTableOfStrings) This is the first step to culling files from an archive or directory. Files are only installed if they match a specified wildcard. Wildcards are simple to use: they only allow '?' for single character matches and '*' to match a sequence of characters. You may specify a single string, or a list of wildcards, like this: -- matches sounds/heroes/laser13.wav and sounds/villians/laser02.wav wildcards = "sounds/*/laser??.wav" ...or... -- everything in the maps, sounds, and graphics directories. -- (this includes subdirs! '*' matches past '/' separators!) wildcards = { "maps/*", "sounds/*", "graphics/*" } filter (no default, mustBeFunction) This is a function that takes two arguments, a string that represents the path of a single file relative to the root of the installation destination and a table with additional information about the file. The table has the following fields: type (string) The type of the file. Valid types are "file", "dir", "symlink" and "unknown". filesize (number) The size of the file in bytes. linkdest (string) The destination of the symbolic link if the file is of type "symlink" otherwise it's nil. filename (string) The file name. This function may return nil to choose not to install this file, which is useful for culling files from an archive, or a string that represents a new destination for the file, which is useful for renaming some files on-the-fly: filter = function(dest, ent) if string.match(dest, ".exe$") then return nil -- skip Windows .exe files on Unix. end if dest == "SOMEFILE.TXT" then return "somefile.txt" -- force this to lowercase. end if ent.type == "dir" then return dest, "0755" -- make sure directories are created with the proper permission end return dest -- everything else can go through as-is. end Filters can optionally return a second argument, a string, that defines the destination file's permissions. This can be omitted, or nil, to use the default permissions: filter = function(dest) if dest == "mygame-binary" then return dest, "0755" -- make sure it's executable. end return dest -- everything else just goes through as-is. end Please see the documentation for Setup.File's "permissions" attribute for further discussion. allowoverwrite (no default, mustBeBool) If true, the installer will overwrite existing files without warning. If false, the user will be prompted before overwriting each file. Files are actually moved out of the way instead of overwritten, so the installer can restore them if the install is cancelled or fails mid-way. They are deleted only after a successful install. permissions (no default, mustBePerms) Override the permissions with which the files will be created. This is a string, not a number...this allows both for future expansion (non-Unix systems, extended attributes, etc), and works around the fact that Lua does not have syntax for specifying octal numbers directly. Currently this string maps to Unix permissions as an octal number: "0644" would be read/write access for the user, and read-only for the group and everyone else. If set to nil or not specified, the new file's permissions will be whatever is already associated with the file (such as the Unix permissions in a .tar file's entry). Please note that files coming from a real filesystem will have their defaults overridden by MojoSetup (to "0644"), since many operating systems tend to report every file on a CD-ROM as read-only and executable, which is frequently not what you want in the installed copy. Plan accordingly. You can return a permissions string as the second value from your filter function as well, which may be more efficient if you only need to change a few files, (each Setup.File has to iterate the whole archive, so you want to avoid specifying multiple Setup.Files for one archive when possible), or need to adjust permissions in only a portion of a downloaded archive. This attribute applies permissions to every file installed through this element. If this attribute is set and the filter returns a non-nil permission, the filter takes precedence. Setup.DesktopMenuItem: This element specifies a menu item that will be installed in the system desktop menu: this might be the "Applications" dropdown in the GNOME panel, or the "Start" bar on Windows, for example. This can be a child of Setup.Option (in which case it is only considered for installation if the option itself is too), or Setup.Package (in which case it is always considered for installation). Some of this element's properties are ignored on some operating systems, but they are still required both for cross-platform safety and future expansion. Setup.DesktopMenuItem attributes: disabled (no default, mustBeBool) If this is true, the menu item will be skipped by the installer. You probably want this to be true, but you might need to programmatically shut off specific menu items. name (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This is the proper name of the item to be installed ("Firefox"). genericname (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This is a generic name for the item to be installed ("Web Browser"). tooltip (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This is used as a tooltip for the item by the OS when the user hovers the mouse pointer over it. builtin_icon (no default, mustBeBool) If this is true, then "icon" refers to a platform-dependent standard icon. Currently, this only makes sense on Unix systems that follow the freedesktop.org standards. If this is false, then "icon" refers to a file, relative to the installation's destination directory, which the must be installed through a Setup.File. Most installers should set this to false (the default) unless they know what they are doing. icon (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) The icon to use with this menu item. Please see builtin_icon for info on what this string means. The format of files that may be used as icons varies from platform to platform; you may need to install a different file programmatically, based on the value of MojoSetup.info.platform. commandline (no default, mustExist, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This is the command line that will be used to launch the application when the end user clicks on the desktop menu item. The string "%0" is replaced with the install destination, so if you need an absolute path to mygame.exe, and the user is installing to /home/user/mygame, you should specify "%0/mygame.exe" to get "/home/user/mygame/mygame.exe". workingdir (no default, mustBeString, cantBeEmpty) This is the path that should be set to the current working directory when launching the installed application. The string "%0" is replaced with the install destination, so if you need an absolute path to somedir, and the user is installing to /home/user/mygame, you should specify "%0/somedir" to get "/home/user/mygame/somedir". If not specified, the system will choose a directory for you, which is not what you want if you need a specific path. Non-absolute paths are not recommended unless you know what you're doing. category (no default, mustExist, mustBeStringOrTableOfStrings) This is a category (or array of categories) that the menu item applies to. You can choose several, but one is usually less confusing. Valid choices are currently: AudioVideo, Development, Education, Game, Graphics, Network, Office, Settings, System, Utility. mimetype (no default, mustBeStringOrTableOfStrings) This is a MIME type (or array of MIME types) that the menu item can handle. For example, if you are installing an image viewer, you might specify: mimetype={"image/jpeg", "image/png"}; ... this is optional, you don't have to specify any mimetypes at all. !!! FIXME: there is currently no way for an installer to inform the system !!! FIXME: of associations between new file extensions and mimetypes. !!! FIXME: Things that collect mime info themselves, like web browsers !!! FIXME: and email clients, can use new apps this way, however. !!! FIXME: there is currently no way for an installer to add submenus. Add any localized strings: If you added strings to the installer or your config file that you want translated at runtime, you need to add them to scripts/app_localization.lua. This is a Lua script, too, of course, but you really should treat it like a basic config file. The format looks something like this: ["Yes"] = { es = "Si"; fr = "Oui"; }; As you can see, the ["Yes"] is a string to translate. These are always English by convention, but this is whatever the string you wish to translate. Please note that the brackets are important, and only used on this specific string. The fields in this structure are language abbreviations that match a user's locale and the string of translated text. Please note that you can do locale-specific translations, too: ["colors"] = { en_UK = "colours"; }; All strings in this file (and all Lua scripts) are UTF-8 encoded. Using a high-ASCII character will not work like you expect at runtime! These lookup tables are used at runtime to translate strings, both by you and internally by MojoSetup. You can do a translation by calling: MojoSetup.translate("colors") We recommend making a convenience function like this at the top of your config.lua... local function _ = MojoSetup.translate ...so that you have a convention for translations that cause minimal clutter: Setup.Option { description = _("Level editor utility"), -- ...etc... } A detailed example of how to do this is scripts/localization.lua, which you should ship with your installer. You probably shouldn't add your strings to localization.lua directly, though. MojoSetup uses this file for text it uses internally, and the file changes a lot. Using app_localization.lua allows your translations to live separately from MojoSetup's, which has two benefits. First, you don't have to merge your translation work with MojoSetup's every time you upgrade. Second, you can override default translations, like this: ["Uninstall complete"] = { en = "Uninstall complete. You may also delete '.MyGame' in your home directory to remove personal savegames and settings.", it = "Disinstallazione completata. Se desideri cancellare i salvataggi e le impostazione cancella '.MyGame' nella tua directory home.", -- ...other languages here... }; app_localization.lua's translations will be favored over localization.lua's. In the above example, a language that doesn't have an override may still get a correctly translated "Uninstall complete" without the extras from the base file. Package up the final file for distribution: Now you have a MojoSetup binary and a directory tree containing your data, GUI plugins, and scripts (including the config.lua you just wrote). Now you just need to glue them together. MojoSetup will attempt to look at itself as an archive on startup, which works in the same way "self-extracting" exe files worked on other operating systems. If you want MojoSetup to be self-extracting, zip your directory tree up and append it to the binary: zip -9r mydata.zip data guis scripts ./make_self_extracting ./mojosetup mydata.zip Now rename "mojosetup" to something meaningful (mygame-1.0-linux-x86.bin or whatever), and you've got an installer. If you have the luxury of a real filesystem (inside a disk image or on a CD you are shipping, for example), MojoSetup will use the binary's directory if it doesn't find a zipfile appended to the binary itself, so you can just have "data", "scripts" and "guis" in the same directory as "mojosetup" to have it work, too. Now you're done! Give your installer to the public. MojoSetup-provided globals: Your config file is a Lua script, and as such, has access to all of Lua's runtime library (presuming you didn't disable it when building MojoSetup) and several other bits of MojoSetup-specific functionality. Everything the installer provides to your script is under the "MojoSetup" table, so as not to pollute the namespace. Also, the config files use the "Setup" table for the basic config schema. Everything else is free game. Here are the globals that MojoSetup provides: MojoSetup.format(fmt, ...) Format a string, sort of (but not exactly!) like sprintf(). The only formatters accepted are %0 through %9 (and %%), which do not have to appear in order in the string, but match the varargs in the order they are passed to the function. format('%1 %0 %1 %%', 'X', 'Y', 'Z') will return the string: 'Y X Y %' MojoSetup.fatal(errstr) Display (errstr) to the end user and stop the installation. The installer will attempt to clean up any half-finished installation, including rolling back any files that would have been replaced had the installation succeeded. You should never use error() in the standard Lua runtime; use this instead. MojoSetup.runfile(script) Run the code in a given Lua file. This is JUST the base filename. MojoSetup will look for it in the Base Archive in the scripts/ directory, both as script.luac and script.lua. This code chunk will accept no arguments, and return no results, but it can change the global state and alter tables, etc, so it can have lasting side effects. Will return false if the file couldn't be loaded, or true if the chunk successfully ran. Will not return if there's a runtime error in the chunk, as it will call MojoSetup.fatal() instead. You should use this instead of the "require" function in the Lua runtime, as require() won't respect the Base Archive. MojoSetup.platform.runscript(script, devnull, args...) Run the given script in a shell. If devnull is true, all stdout and stderr will be suppressed (literally sent to /dev/null on Unix systems). Please note that lots of things can be done through Lua, directly in your config file, so you don't have to worry about the unique quirks of various shells on end user systems. Still, there are times when this is useful. MojoSetup.translate(str) Find the proper translation for the end user's locale in the localization table. Returns the translation, or the original string if no translation was available. It's common to use this for shorthand: local function _ = MojoSetup.translate ...so you can be less verbose: print(_("translate this string")) MojoSetup.ticks() Return the time, in milliseconds, that the process has been running. MojoSetup.logwarning(str) Write a warning to the installation log, if logging settings permit. MojoSetup.logerror(str) Write an error to the installation log, if logging settings permit. MojoSetup.loginfo(str) Write an info string to the installation log, if logging settings permit. MojoSetup.logdebug(str) Write debug info to the installation log, if logging settings permit. MojoSetup.launchbrowser(url) Launch a web browser to view the URL (url). This will try to launch a new window/tab of the user's preferred handler for the url. Launching "http://" URLs are probably always safe, other protocols, like "ftp://" may or may not work, depending on what the platform offers. Returns true if the browser launched, false otherwise. We can't know if the URL actually loaded or rendered, just if the browser launched. The hope is that the browser will inform the user if there's a problem loading the URL. MojoSetup.msgbox(title, str) Show (str) to the user with a GUI message box, and wait until they click an "OK" button. (title) is the message box's title. MojoSetup.promptyn(title, str, defval) Show (str) to the user with a GUI message box, and wait until they click either a "YES" or "NO" button. Returns true if they clicked YES, false if they clicked "NO". (title) is the message box's title. (defval) is an optional boolean value: whether the default action should be "YES" or "NO". If (defval) isn't specified, it defaults to false. MojoSetup.promptynan(title, str, defval) Show (str) to the user with a GUI message box, and wait until they click either a "YES", "NO", "ALWAYS" or "NEVER" button. Returns the string "yes", "no", "always", or "never". (title) is the message box's title. (defval) is an optional boolean value: whether the default action should be "YES" or "NO" ... "always" and "never" cannot be the default, since these tend to be destructive actions that the user should consciously choose to do. If (defval) isn't specified, it defaults to false. MojoSetup.stackwalk() This writes a backtrace of the current Lua callstack to the installation log, if logging settings permit debug-level logging. MojoSetup.cmdline(flag) See if a given flag was on the command line for the process. MojoSetup.cmdline("nosound") will return true if "-nosound", "--nosound", etc was on the command line. The option must start with a '-' on the command line to be noticed by this function. Returns true if flag was on the command line, false otherwise. MojoSetup.cmdlinestr(flag, envr, deflt) Get robust command line options, with optional default for missing ones. If the command line was ./myapp --a=b -c=d ----e f - cmdlinestr("a") will return "b" - cmdlinestr("c") will return "d" - cmdlinestr("e") will return "f" - cmdlinestr("g") will return the default string. Like MojoSetup.cmdline(), the option must start with a '-'. (envr) is an optional environment var to check if command line wasn't found. You can call this function without specifying this parameter, or pass a nil here. (deflt) is the return value if (flag) isn't on the command line. MojoSetup.collectgarbage() Do a complete run of the Lua garbage collector. Use this instead of the version in the Lua standard runtime, since this version does better debug logging. MojoSetup.date() Return a string of the current date. This is roughly the same as os.date() in the standard Lua runtime, but we didn't want to add the os table dependencies just to write this string into the log. MojoSetup.info.uid This is a number (not a function!) that lists the user id of the person running the installer. On Unix, this is what getuid() reports (and zero would be the root user). MojoSetup.info.euid This is a number (not a function!) that lists the EFFECTIVE user id of the person running the installer. On Unix, this is what geteuid() reports (and zero would be the root user). MojoSetup.info.gid This is a number (not a function!) that lists the group id of the person running the installer. On Unix, this is what getgid() reports. MojoSetup.info.locale This is a string (not a function!) of the current locale, in the format xx_YY, where "xx" is the language code (en for English, de for German, etc) and "YY" is the country code: "en_US" for American English, fr_CA for Canadian French, etc. If MojoSetup can't determine the user's locale, this string is "???". MojoSetup.info.platform This is a string (not a function!) of the current platform. This is currently one of "macosx", "unix", "windows", or "beos", or one of several others, depending on your build and target platform. MojoSetup.info.arch This is a string (not a function!) of the current platform's CPU type. This is currently one of "x86", "x86-64", "powerpc", "powerpc64", or one of several others, depending on your build and target platform. Please note that this is the arch of the installer binary...you can run a 32-bit binary on an amd64 chip, in which case it will report "x86"! You may have better luck with MojoSetup.info.machine. Maybe. MojoSetup.info.machine This is a string (not a function!) of the current platform's machine type. This string is arbitrary and platform specific, so it's only useful if you know what you're looking for on a specific subset of your target audience. For Unix-like systems, this string is the output of "uname -m". Please note that modern Intel Mac OS X systems can run 64-bit binaries but may report themselves as "i386" here, for example, and also seamlessly run PowerPC apps in an emulator. MojoSetup.info.ostype This is a string (not a function!) of the current platform's operating system. This is currently one of "macosx", "beos", "linux", "freebsd", "netbsd", "openbsd", "bsdi", "aix", "hpux", "irix", or "solaris". Please note that this is the OS target of the installer binary...you can run a Linux binary on FreeBSD through the binary compatibility layer, in which case it will still report "linux"! On Windows, this is currently either "win9x" or "winnt" to differentiate Windows 95/98/ME from NT/XP/Vista/etc, since their version numbers can overlap. Installers should not rely on there never being a third string some day in the distant future, though. MojoSetup.info.osversion This is a string (not a function!) of the current platform's operating system version. This may not be useful information on many platforms. On Mac OS X, it's the system version (So it might be 10.4.9 on a Tiger install, 10.3.8 on a Panther install, etc). On other Unixes, it's the "release" field from uname(), which on Linux gives you the kernel version, which is usually not helpful, but could be on, say, BeOS. On Windows, it'll be the Major.Minor.Build version for the OS. This is the same information that the win32 OSVERSIONINFO structure supplies: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724834.aspx So "5.1.2600" might mean "Windows XP, service pack 1" ... relying on the build number can be very dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, but the major/minor values appear to be reliable to differentiate various flavors of Windows (and MojoSetup.info.ostype can differentiate between the Win95-based and WinNT-based versions). On any platform, it would be wise to not rely too heavily on this data: it's frequently better to check for the specific thing you want to know about ("Is DirectX 9 installed?") rather than ask a general question ("Is this Windows XP?"). This prevents problems when unexpected values arise in situations you never expected to handle (for example, if you ran the Windows installer under Wine, it could report that its Windows XP, but there's no DirectX 9 support). Knowing what you really want to know is half the battle. MojoSetup.info.ui This is a string (not a function!) of the UI plugin that MojoSetup chose. This is currently one of "stdio", "ncurses", "macosx", "gtkplus2", "www", or one of several others, depending on your build and target platform. It's best to not rely on this being within a specific set of values. MojoSetup.info.buildver This is a string (not a function!) of the build identifier for this binary. You can print this string to stdout by running ./mojosetup --buildver at the command line. MojoSetup.info.loglevel This is a string (not a function!) of the logging level that MojoSetup is enforcing. This is currently one of "nothing", "errors", "warnings", "info", "debug", or "everything" ... each level includes the previous level, so "warnings" will also log error messages, but not info or debug messages. MojoSetup.info.homedir This is a string (not a function!) of the "home directory" of the end-user in the physical filesystem. This is useful if you want to determine a sane default location to write files. MojoSetup.info.argv This is a string array (not a function!) of the installer process's command line arguments. You might find MojoSetup.cmdline() or MojoSetup.cmdlinestr() to be more useful. MojoSetup.info.supportedurls This is a string array (not a function!) of URL types the installer supports. You can either iterate it... for k,v in pairs(MojoSetup.info.supportedurls) do print("installer supports " .. v .. ":// URLs") end ...or you can query it... if MojoSetup.info.supportedurls["http"] ~= nil then print("installer supports http:// URLs") end "base" and "media" are included in the list, always. The rest are compile-time options. MojoSetup.destination This is a string (not a function!) of the path on the physical filesystem where the package is being installed. This is not available until the user has selected a destination, but could be useful in your postinstall script. MojoSetup.manifest This is a table of tables (not a function!) that is built during the course of the installation. As changes are made to the destination filesystem, they are noted in MojoSetup.manifest, so this will be complete and most useful during a postinstall hook in your config file. As with most other globals listed here, MojoSetup depends on this data, so you should treat it as read-only. Modifying this table from your config script will result in undefined (but probably bad) behaviour. There is one element in the array for each Setup.Option that generated a change to the filesystem. Each of these elements is an array of tables. for option,items in pairs(MojoSetup.manifest) do local desc = option if type(desc) == "table" then -- could be a string in some cases! desc = desc.description end print("Option: " .. desc) for i,item in ipairs(items) do -- ... do stuff with "item" here ... end end The format of the item tables vary depending on type. They all have a "type" field, which is a string. Based on the type, different fields are available: if item.type == "file" then print("file created at " .. item.path) print("with permissions" .. item.mode) -- This is a string! -- Checksums may or may not exist in this table, depending on how -- MojoSetup was compiled. You can iterate to find out what's there: print("checksums:") if item.checksums ~= nil then for k,v in pairs(item.checksums) do print(" " .. k .. ": " .. v) -- "crc32: 92FAB211E", etc. end end end if item.type == "dir" then print("directory created at " .. item.path) print("with permissions" .. item.mode) -- This is a string! end if item.type == "symlink" then print("symbolic link created at " .. item.path) print("pointing to " .. item.linkdest) end // end of docs.txt ...