I am trying to install the SketchupProFull-2020-0-363-132.exe silently but the /qb switch that worked for 2019 doesn’t work for 2020. I get the following message "The setup command line is invalid. The setup cannot proceed.
SketchUp 2020 is using a new installer engine. Please refer to release notes.
https://help.sketchup.com/en/current-release-notes
I don’t see anything in the release notes about silent switches
Neither did I. I was pointing out the reason why “that worked for 2019 doesn’t work for 2020”. Ie, an incorrect assumption.
I thought that the release notes named the installer engine, … my mistake. (But when you manually run the installer you can see that it’s InstallShield. Or if you watched the folder where the installer was run from, you’ll see a "InstallShield.log" file appear.)
P.S. - retitled topic thread to add “InstallShield installer”
_from http://unattended.sourceforge.net/installers.php_ …
InstallShield
InstallShield is one of the oldest and most widely used application packaging systems.
Installers created by InstallShield recognize the
/r,/s,/sms,/f1, and/f2switches. The installer itself is invariably namedsetup.exe.To perform a silent installation, you need an InstallShield “answer file”, customarily named
setup.iss. Some applications ship with such a file, but if yours does not, you can use the graphical installer itself to create one.Here is how it works. Run the installer with the
/r(“record”) switch. Proceed through the dialogs and complete the installation. This will create asetup.issfile and place it in theC:\WINDOWSdirectory (yes, really). This file will include all of your responses to the InstallShield dialogs, allowing you to perform unattended installations as if you were giving the same answers again. Simply copysetup.issto the same directory as the installer executable.Once you have a
setup.issfile, run the installer with the/s(“silent”) option. This will perform an unattended installation.Unfortunately, the installer will fork a separate process and exit, meaning it will return immediately even if you run it under
start /wait. This makes it useless for scripting purposes. Luckily, there is another switch,/sms, which will cause the installer to pause until the installation completes.Hence, for an InstallShield application, you want to provide both the
/sand the/smsswitches.The
/f1filenameswitch allows you to specify a fully-qualified alternate name for thesetup.issfile. Note that there must be no space between the/f1switch and the file name. This switch works both with/rto create the file and with/sto read it.The
/f2filenameswitch specifies a log file. Once again, there must be no space between the switch and the file name.WARNING : Be careful what characters you use in these file names, because InstallShield silently strips certain non-alphanumerics (like hyphens).
Oh, one more thing. The
/rand/sswitches only work if the release engineer is competent. Many packages have “custom dialogs” which are not supported bysetup.iss, which means the dialogs will always appear no matter what you do. For such packages, I suggest asking the vendor to fix their installer.
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Well the sketchup installer doesn’t seem to use these switches. Couldn’t use the record switch to create the file so we will just have to instruct our users on how to answer the prompts during the install. Thanks for the info. Maybe Sketchup will release info on how to create a silent install.
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/silent will work. I’m not sure what other setup parameters do.
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/silent does appear to work, but the computer automatically restarts, which is not an option for us. /r is broken. Kind of frustrating that the installer was switched to installshield, and yet doesent support installshield flags correctly.
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Hi all, is there any news on the install switches?
The package seems to be created with InstallShield, but none of the usual switches seems to work?!
A proper documentation would be much appreciated
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Sketchup support replied to the ticket I submitted that the /silent switch will work but has to be run from an elevated command line or script and will install the defaults of English and C:\Program Files\SketchUp\SketchUp 2020 as the install directory. They suggested downloading the full installer and that you want to make sure the following prerequisites are installed before running the silent install.
Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019 Redistributable (x64) - 14.23.27820
KB2999226 - Windows 7 Only
Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.2
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I am in the same boat as you. I can use the /silent switch but auto reboot of the machine makes it impossible to deploy. I have over 100 machines.
I had a new thought about this. We’ve been noticing that some normal 2020 installs need a restart, and some don’t. There is reason to believe that people who are lacking MS libraries end up with needing to restart, but people who have those libraries already don’t.
Could you have an MSI way to install the other required libraries, then /silent install SketchUp?
I’m not sure how you would avoid the restart when doing the MS libraries, but at least SketchUp wouldn’t get blamed.
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Solution (at least it worked for me) for silently installing on Windows 10 without a restart:
This is what my installer looks like. I have the latest visual c++ redistributable (14.24.28127) in my install directory, and the .net framework 4.5.2. I call them both silently with no restart flags, and only after installing those, call Sketchups installer. This does not cause a restart and installs Sketchup. I havnt been able to test it as it doesent support running on a virtual machine, but I can at least get to the license agreement screen. Looks like that is the only way to do this silently without a restart being needed.
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Alternatively you can extract the MSI by clicking through the install wizard and when it says something about preparing the MSI you can find it in %localappdata%\temp\
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