Downstall – download & install – is a quick utility I wrote using AutoIT that downloads and installs a program in one step.

It’s usage is rather easy, from the command line run Downstall with three command-line options and it will do all the work: download the program and run the executable with options that you define. In addition, status of each step along the way will be outputted to a log file for examining upon failure.

Usage

Again, using Downstall is rather easy, you just need three pieces of information:

1. A short name for what you are installing. This is only used as a description within the log file.
2. The URL in which the program can be downloaded.
3. Any command-line installation options. The character sequence “*$PATH$*” (without the quotes) will be replaced with the 8.3 directory in which Downstall is running.

Once you have the above, just include them on the command-line separated by “(~)” (again, without the quotes). Some people have asked why I used an opening and closing parentheses and a tilde; the only reason really is that those three characters are very unlikely to be in a URL – at least in that sequence.

So let’s say you wanted to download the Microsoft .NET 3.5 framework automatically (please watch for line-wraps):

REM Download & Install Microsoft .NET 3.5 using Downstall
downstall.exe MS .Net Framework 3.5(~)http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/0/3/703455ee-a747-4cc8-bd3e-98a615c3aedb/dotNetFx35setup.exe(~)/q /norestart

Download this code: downstall.cmd

That’s it!

You’ll have two log files – downstall-main.log and downstall-exit.log – waiting for you in the same directory downstall.exe is located. The downstall-main.log file keeps a running log file of all the installations performed by Downstall, while downstall-exit.log contains the exit code from the last installation program. This allows for easy, automated parsing of the download-exit.log file for any errors within the actual program being installed instead of Downstall itself.

Download: Downstall