Create Windows MSI installer for unattended installation

[mbacchi]

We've received requests [0] [1] to create a Windows MSI installer for unattended Brave installation.

I expect that this needs to be a full install package (i.e. standalone which does not require connecting to our updates server), and thus requires no internet connectivity, versus something similar to the stub installer which downloads the Brave Browser from our server.

For now I'll leave #6240 open but wanted to open an issue which documents the explicit request for tracking purposes.

[t-jones14]

Any update on this?

[bsclifton]

No update on MSI unfortunately - but I can share a way to do an install which should work in a corporate environment

You can download the BraveBrowserSilentSetup.exe executable from any release
ex: from https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.21.74 it would be https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/download/v1.21.74/BraveBrowserSilentSetup.exe

This is a "stub" installer which is only 1.2MB and fetches the real browser install from our servers. You can then invoke it from the command-line like so:
BraveBrowserSilentSetup.exe /silent /install

[shawnkhall]

..."stub" installer which is only 1.2MB and fetches the real browser install from our servers...

Two of the problems with this solution (which I have used myself for quite a while) are that it still has to download 70+MB for each device and doesn't provide extended logging on failures. When you have a network of even only a couple dozen computers, this is a huge hit on the uplink when we push out an update and often an install will stall and it's impossible to identify the reason one of them failed.

We really need the ability to install a completely locally-cached installation package.

[bsclifton]

..."stub" installer which is only 1.2MB and fetches the real browser install from our servers...

Two of the problems with this solution (which I have used myself for quite a while) are that it still has to download 70+MB for each device and doesn't provide extended logging on failures. When you have a network of even only a couple dozen computers, this is a huge hit on the uplink when we push out an update and often an install will stall and it's impossible to identify the reason one of them failed.

We really need the ability to install a completely locally-cached installation package.

The first problem is addressable 🙂 Thanks for sharing the other - I don't think there is a good way to check (at the moment) other than return code

Using the above link to latest stable:
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.21.74

You can download the BraveBrowserStandaloneSilentSetup.exe binary (https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/download/v1.21.74/BraveBrowserStandaloneSilentSetup.exe) which should install without any outbound calls

Although this installer is not as nice as an MSI... maybe we can make an download alias for the latest Windows silent stand-alone installer. The stub installer is easy to provide because it points at Omaha server - we may have to index what the "latest" build is ourselves if we want to provide a full silent installer (ex: something like https://laptop-updates.brave.com/latest/winx64-full-silent which we'd need to provide anyways if we did have an MSI)
cc: @mihaiplesa

[C0nw0nk]

Is this what you wanted ?

One url to always download latest silent installer for brave browser

64 bit latest

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/latest/download/BraveBrowserStandaloneSilentNightlySetup.exe
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/latest/download/BraveBrowserStandaloneSilentBetaSetup.exe
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/latest/download/BraveBrowserStandaloneSilentSetup.exe

32 bit latest

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/latest/download/BraveBrowserStandaloneSilentNightlySetup32.exe
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/latest/download/BraveBrowserStandaloneSilentBetaSetup32.exe
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/latest/download/BraveBrowserStandaloneSilentSetup32.exe

Don't need any flags just run it

C:\users\username\desktop\BraveBrowserStandaloneSilentNightlySetup.exe

[shawnkhall]

Is this what you wanted ?
One url to always download latest silent installer for brave browser

It would be, but unfortunately these links don't work. Are there current static links to these files?

[C0nw0nk]

Is this what you wanted ?
One url to always download latest silent installer for brave browser

It would be, but unfortunately these links don't work. Are there current static links to these files?

Fixed now they changed the file name just removed "nightly" from the file name in the url and works fine.

[C0nw0nk]

If you don't want to use my links above you can use githubs api to grab the latest ".exe"

https://api.github.com/repos/brave/brave-browser/releases/latest

Json | browser_download_url and search for ".exe"

64 bit :

*setup.exe 64 bit

32 bit :

*setup32.exe 32 bit

[CynthiaArmstrong]

Is a .MSI still planned or is BraveBrowserStandaloneSilentSetup.exe the way to go?

[mihaiplesa]

@CynthiaArmstrong you're right, that's still the preferred way for now.