Ask HN: Is there any good OSS for interactive Windows automation? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is there any good OSS for interactive Windows automation?

3 pointsdanscan2 comments

I am hoping someone who is more familiar with Windows can make a software recommendation for me that's central to a new project I'm starting.

I'm working on a gaming app that involves automatically installing games on Windows.

For example, an end-user workflow to install and play GTA V might be:

Enter a license key (if you already bought it), OR enter your payment info to buy a license key.

An automation action downloads the game, and applies/purchases its license via the variables (license key or payment info) specified by the user.

I'm looking for something that's easy enough to program interactively (not via code), so that a layperson can create a flow for installing a game, and specify the variables to collect from the end user.

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AutoHotkey[1] is good and OSS. AutoIt[2] is better for automation, it is free but not OSS. Neither lets you program completely interactively but the scripting is so simple that a computer literate layperson should be able to do simple tasks after maybe a day.

If the tasks are more complicated interactive programming wouldn't help you anyway in my opinion. For example there are several ways to identify a certain window. They all heave their uses and are more stable or more fragile depending on the circumstances. A workflow where you just click on a window wouldn't help you here and neither is a scripting language the biggest road block. The difficulty is to know enough about the inner workings of Windows and the software you want to control to create a stable solution. If your testers can master this they will be OK with a scripting language too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoHotkey

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoIt

Well this might not meet your needs (and it has been a lot of years since I've used it because I don't do Windows anymore) but I believe Wix wixtoolset.org is still the default way of building installers for Windows.

When I used it I built a tool to generate installers for an enterprise product so that the consultants who were going out to the government organization to install the product could have a premade installer that did 80% of the work for them when they got there.

Perhaps you could build what you need if you find a sample installer that meets your needs, some good examples here https://github.com/rstropek/Samples/tree/master/WiXSamples

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