Passing command line arguments to SFX created with DotNetZip

Question

I created a self-extracting zip using DotNetZip with the following options:

var opts = new SelfExtractorSaveOptions();
opts.RemoveUnpackedFilesAfterExecute = true;
opts.PostExtractCommandLine = "TestApp.exe";
opts.Flavor = SelfExtractorFlavor.ConsoleApplication;
zip1.SaveSelfExtractor("TestAppSFX.exe", opts);

Is it possible to pass command line arguments to my self-extracting zip that will then be passed to the console application that gets invoked after extracting?

I.e., I want to be able to type something like the following:

TestAppSFX.exe -flag

Then, my console application TestApp.exe would receive -flag as an argument.

These arguments will vary depending on usage, so specifying them when I create the SFX is not an option.

Answer 1

I looked at the source code and this doesn't appear to be possible with DotNetZip. I'm now using 7zip to do this as indicated here

I also found this question, which says this is possible with WinRar.

Answer 2

Yes you can pass flags using DotNetZip, but you need to do a little work.

You need to download the source and modify CommandLineSelfExtractorStub.cs to accept you own custom arguments. Once you've done that, you can build it into a new stub exe.

To build your SFX you would do something like this...

byte[] stub = GetStubExecutable(); //read in your new stub file
output.Write(stub, 0, stub.Length);

using (ZipFile zip = new ZipFile())
{
    String[] filenames = System.IO.Directory.GetFiles(Path.Combine(path,FilesFolder)); 
    // Add the rest of they files you'd like in your SFX
    foreach (String filename in filenames)
    {
        ZipEntry e = zip.AddFile(filename, OutputZipFolder);
    }

    zip.Save(output); // save the zip to the outputstream
}