NOTES CLIENT INSTALLATION AND SMART UPGRADE

Creating and using a traditional third-party installer
Using the underlying Lotus® Expeditor platform, developers, assemblers, and deployers can create, assemble, and then deploy custom and third-party features to the IBM® Lotus® Notes® runtime to add new features after Lotus Notes has been installed.

For information about customizing the supplied Lotus Notes install kit to add new custom or third-party features during Notes install, see the topic Customizing Notes installation using the install manifest.

While this process describes how to customize the install manifest and update site to prepare to install Lotus Notes, the information can be useful as you create the third-party installer and install custom or third-party features into an existing Notes runtime.

For information about signing new features and configuring responses to provisioning trust prompts during install and update, see the topic Signing custom or third-party features and plug-ins for install and update.

Assumptions and prerequisites

Assumptions and prerequisites are as follows:


Process overview

This procedure uses a combination of existing Lotus Expeditor and Lotus Notes documentation to describe the process for creating a third-party installer. Each step may contain one or more links to topics in which you will find information about how to complete the step.

The overview steps for creating and deploying a traditional third-party installer within the context of Lotus Expeditor and Lotus Notes 8 are:

1. Create the new feature using the Expeditor integrate development environment (IDE).


2. Sign the JAR files in the update site.

3. Create the install manifest file in the deploy directory, deploy\install.xml.

4. Determine where the Notes 8 <install_dir> \framework is located on the target system. For example, the Notes 8 <install_dir>framework directory may be Programs and Files\IBM\Lotus\Notes\data\framework.

5. Create a new PLUGIN_CUSTOMIZATION.INI file in the deploy directory, deploy\plugin_customization.ini.


6. Merge your new PLUGIN_CUSTOMIZATION.INI file with the installed PLUGIN_CUSTOMIZATION.INI on the target client.

7. Start Lotus Notes 8.

8. Process your install manifest, deploy\install.xml, to install the new feature or feature set to the existing Notes 8 runtime on the target system. You can do this using the rcplauncher tool or you can bundle the new installer in a media kit.

The steps above are explained below and, where possible, contain links to explanatory help.

9. Create the feature, for example, using the Lotus® Expeditor integrated development environment (IDE). For more information, see the following resources:

10. Create or confirm the features and plug-ins content in the update site. If you used the Expeditor IDE, the features and plugins subdirectories and their JAR file contents should already exist.

11. Create or confirm the SITE.XML index in the update site. If you used the Expeditor IDE, the SITE.XML index should already exist.

12. Sign the feature and plug-in JAR files in the update site.

For more information, see the topic Signing custom or third-party features and plug-ins.

13. Create a PLUGIN_CUSTOMIZATION.INI file and add any additional settings that you need. For example, you might specify the name of a default update server. Ensure that this file resides in your deploy directory, deploy\plugin_customization.ini.


14. Create and validate the install manifest INSTALL.XML to be used during third-party install. Ensure that this file resides in your deploy directory, deploy\install.xml. The install manifest describes what to install, update, or remove. For more information, see the following resources: 15. Perform a Merge Manifest operation. For more information, see the following resources: 16. Determine where the Lotus Notes 8 runtime is located on the target system and start Lotus Notes 8.
17. Deploy the new features to the Lotus Notes 8 runtime and launch provisioning. 18. Test and distribute the third-party installer as needed.

Lotus Expeditor documentation references

You may find the following Expeditor topics helpful as you begin to create third-party installers.


See also