HERMIT: A new Methodology for Creating Autonomous Software Deployment Packages

An Installation that is performed without user interaction and does not display any message or GUI during its progress is known as Silent Unattended Installation. Silent unattended installation plays a key role when installing software over networks and time is of immense importance because it does not require user interaction/intervention during the process and usually skips the non important steps which are usually part of installer wizards. In this paper we have proposed HERMIT: A new Methodology for Creating Autonomous Software Deployment Packages that automates the process of silent unattended installations/un-installations and requires minimal possible level of interaction with the user. HERMIT not only introduces new methodology but generalizes the process of silent unattended installation/un-installation. HERMIT installation package when deployed on the PC or network will follow the same steps as performed by the installer and un-installation package will rollback everything added during the installation without user interaction. An agent based system for activity monitoring on network (ABSAMN) is responsible for the deployment of HERMIT Packages on the specified locations of the network. The process is fully autonomous and does not require any user interaction. HERMIT has been evaluated on a large number of softwares, and results were very promising and support the implementation of the solution.