How to create a self-extracting archive that works on DOS?

Question

I need to create a self-extracting archive for DOS. It's on a legacy project that currently uses lha (by Haruyasu Yoshizaki) to create the self-extractor. This does work, however when it runs it asks if we want to replace ever file. For hundreds of files it is a bit of an issue.

So what I need is a way to create executables that will self-extract and provide a yes to all type option on the extractor. It also obviously has to be able to run on DOS.

I have searched on the internet and can find programs that do it but they all seem to need 32-bit.

Answer 1

You can do this with ARJ which you can download from http://arj.sourceforge.net

The trick is to embed command line parameters into the exe which is done by adding a comment which starts with ))

For example, if you create a text file called (for example) options.txt that contains the line

)) -o

and generate your self-extracting exe with the command line

arj A -JE -zoptions.txt TEST.EXE *.*

Then this will automatically overwrite any files (just as if you had specified the -o command line option).

Answer 2

I managed to find a way to do this using Infozip

You need to copy the UNZIPSFX.EXE into a suitable location and then merge as follows:

> cd <folder to zip>
> zip -r app .
> copy /b <UNZIPSFX location>\UNZIPSFX.EXE+app.zip app.exe
> zip -A app.exe

Answer 3

Options include:

using arj (as mentioned elsewhere on this page)

using unzipsfx (as mentioned elsewhere on this page)

using another program that handles LZH files (instead of using self-extracting files). Most archive programs can handle self-extracting files (by ignoring the self-extractor code at the start of an archive).

Perhaps the self-extracting files supports an option, like -y or /? or -? or -h, e.g.:

program.exe -y

You might get by, with using echo or type. e.g.:

echo Y | program.exe

type fileyyyy.txt | program.exe

That vertical bar is the pipe: shift-backslash