The following was generated from http://www.megastep.org/makeself/
-----------------------


               makeself - Make self-extractable archives on Unix

   [1]makeself.sh is a small shell script that generates a
   self-extractable tar.gz archive from a directory. The resulting file
   appears as a shell script (many of those have a .run suffix), and can
   be launched as is. The archive will then uncompress itself to a
   temporary directory and an optional arbitrary command will be executed
   (for example an installation script). This is pretty similar to
   archives generated with WinZip Self-Extractor in the Windows world.
   Makeself archives also include checksums for integrity self-validation
   (CRC and/or MD5 checksums).

   The makeself.sh script itself is used only to create the archives from
   a directory of files. The resultant archive is actually a compressed
   (using gzip, bzip2, or compress) TAR archive, with a small shell
   script stub at the beginning. This small stub performs all the steps
   of extracting the files, running the embedded command, and removing
   the temporary files when it's all over. All what the user has to do to
   install the software contained in such an archive is to "run" the
   archive, i.e sh nice-software.run. I recommend using the "run" (which
   was introduced by some Makeself archives released by Loki Software) or
   "sh" suffix for such archives not to confuse the users, since they
   know it's actually shell scripts (with quite a lot of binary data
   attached to it though!).

   I am trying to keep the code of this script as portable as possible,
   i.e it's not relying on any bash-specific features and only calls
   commands that are installed on any functioning UNIX-compatible system.
   This script as well as the archives it generates should run on any
   Unix flavor, with any compatible Bourne shell, provided of course that
   the compression programs are available.

   As of version 2.1, Makeself has been rewritten and tested on the
   following platforms :
     * Linux (all distributions)
     * Sun Solaris (8 tested)
     * HP-UX (tested on 11.0 and 11i on HPPA RISC)
     * SCO OpenUnix and OpenServer
     * IBM AIX 5.1L
     * MacOS X (Darwin)
     * SGI IRIX 6.5
     * FreeBSD
     * UnicOS / Cray

   If you successfully run Makeself and/or archives created with it on
   another system, then [2]let me know!

   Examples of publicly available archives made using makeself are :
     * Game patches and installers for [3]Id Software games like Quake 3
       for Linux or Return To Castle Wolfenstien ;
     * All game patches released by [4]Loki Software for the Linux
       version of popular games ;
     * The [5]nVidia drivers for Linux
     * The [6]Makeself distribution itself ;-)
     * and countless others...

   Important note for Apache users: By default, most Web servers will
   think that Makeself archives are regular text files and thus they may
   show up as text in a Web browser. The correct way to prevent this is
   to add a MIME type for this file format, like so (in httpd.conf) :
   AddType application/x-makeself .run

   Important note for recent GNU/Linux distributions: Archives created
   with Makeself prior to v2.1.2 were using an old syntax for the head
   and tail Unix commands that is being progressively obsoleted in their
   GNU forms. Therefore you may have problems uncompressing some of these
   archives. A workaround for this is to set the environment variable
   $_POSIX2_VERSION to enable the old syntax, i.e. :
   export _POSIX2_VERSION=199209

Usage

   The syntax of makeself is the following:

   makeself.sh [args] archive_dir file_name label startup_script
   [script_args]
     * args are optional options for Makeself. The available ones are :
          + --version : Prints the version number on stdout, then exits
            immediately
          + --gzip : Use gzip for compression (is the default on
            platforms on which gzip is commonly available, like Linux)
          + --bzip2 : Use bzip2 instead of gzip for better compression.
            The bzip2 command must be available in the command path. I
            recommend that you set the prefix to something like
            '.bz2.run' for the archive, so that potential users know that
            they'll need bzip2 to extract it.
          + --compress : Use the UNIX "compress" command to compress the
            data. This should be the default on all platforms that don't
            have gzip available.
          + --nocomp : Do not use any compression for the archive, which
            will then be an uncompressed TAR.
          + --notemp : The generated archive will not extract the files
            to a temporary directory, but in a new directory created in
            the current directory. This is better to distribute software
            packages that may extract and compile by themselves (i.e.
            launch the compilation through the embedded script).
          + --current : Files will be extracted to the current directory,
            instead of in a subdirectory. This option implies --notemp
            above.
          + --follow : Follow the symbolic links inside of the archive
            directory, i.e. store the files that are being pointed to
            instead of the links themselves.
          + --append (new in 2.1.x): Append data to an existing archive,
            instead of creating a new one. In this mode, the settings
            from the original archive are reused (compression type,
            label, embedded script), and thus don't need to be specified
            again on the command line.
          + --header : Makeself 2.0 uses a separate file to store the
            header stub, called "makeself-header.sh". By default, it is
            assumed that it is stored in the same location as
            makeself.sh. This option can be used to specify its actual
            location if it is stored someplace else.
          + --copy : Upon extraction, the archive will first extract
            itself to a temporary directory. The main application of this
            is to allow self-contained installers stored in a Makeself
            archive on a CD, when the installer program will later need
            to unmount the CD and allow a new one to be inserted. This
            prevents "Filesystem busy" errors for installers that span
            multiple CDs.
          + --nox11 : Disable the automatic spawning of a new terminal in
            X11.
          + --nowait : When executed from a new X11 terminal, disable the
            user prompt at the end of the script execution.
          + --nomd5 and --nocrc : Disable the creation of a MD5 / CRC
            checksum for the archive. This speeds up the extraction
            process if integrity checking is not necessary.
          + --lsm file : Provide and LSM file to makeself, that will be
            embedded in the generated archive. LSM files are describing a
            software package in a way that is easily parseable. The LSM
            entry can then be later retrieved using the '-lsm' argument
            to the archive. An exemple of a LSM file is provided with
            Makeself.
     * archive_dir is the name of the directory that contains the files
       to be archived
     * file_name is the name of the archive to be created
     * label is an arbitrary text string describing the package. It will
       be displayed while extracting the files.
     * startup_script is the command to be executed from within the
       directory of extracted files. Thus, if you wish to execute a
       program contain in this directory, you must prefix your command
       with "./". For example, ./program will be fine. The script_args
       are additionnal arguments for this command.

   Here is an example, assuming the user has a package image stored in a
   /home/joe/mysoft, and he wants to generate a self-extracting package
   named mysoft.sh, which will launch the "setup" script initially stored
   in /home/joe/mysoft :

   makeself.sh /home/joe/mysoft mysoft.sh "Joe's Nice Software Package"
   ./setup
   Here is also how I created the [7]makeself.run archive which contains
   the Makeself distribution :

   makeself.sh --notemp makeself makeself.run "Makeself by Stephane
   Peter" echo "Makeself has extracted itself"

   Archives generated with Makeself 2.1 can be passed the following
   arguments:

     * --keep : Prevent the files to be extracted in a temporary
       directory that will be removed after the embedded script's
       execution. The files will then be extracted in the current working
       directory and will stay here until you remove them.
     * --verbose : Will prompt the user before executing the embedded
       command
     * --target dir : Allows to extract the archive in an arbitrary
       place.
     * --nox11 : Do not spawn a X11 terminal.
     * --confirm : Prompt the user for confirmation before running the
       embedded command.
     * --info : Print out general information about the archive (does not
       extract).
     * --lsm : Print out the LSM entry, if it is present.
     * --list : List the files in the archive.
     * --check : Check the archive for integrity using the embedded
       checksums. Does not extract the archive.
     * --nochown : By default, a "chown -R" command is run on the target
       directory after extraction, so that all files belong to the
       current user. This is mostly needed if you are running as root, as
       tar will then try to recreate the initial user ownerships. You may
       disable this behavior with this flag.
     * --tar : Run the tar command on the contents of the archive, using
       the following arguments as parameter for the command.
     * --noexec : Do not run the embedded script after extraction.

   Any subsequent arguments to the archive will be passed as additional
   arguments to the embedded command. You should explicitly use the --
   special command-line construct before any such options to make sure
   that Makeself will not try to interpret them.

License

   Makeself is covered by the [8]GNU General Public License (GPL) version
   2 and above. Archives generated by Makeself don't have to be placed
   under this license (although I encourage it ;-)), since the archive
   itself is merely data for Makeself.

Download

   Get the latest official distribution [9]here (version 2.1.3).

   The latest development version can be grabbed from the Loki Setup CVS
   module, at [10]cvs.icculus.org.

Version history

     * v1.0: Initial public release
     * v1.1: The archive can be passed parameters that will be passed on
       to the embedded script, thanks to John C. Quillan
     * v1.2: Cosmetic updates, support for bzip2 compression and
       non-temporary archives. Many ideas thanks to Francois Petitjean.
     * v1.3: More patches from Bjarni R. Einarsson and Francois
       Petitjean: Support for no compression (--nocomp), script is no
       longer mandatory, automatic launch in an xterm, optional verbose
       output, and -target archive option to indicate where to extract
       the files.
     * v1.4: Many patches from Francois Petitjean: improved UNIX
       compatibility, automatic integrity checking, support of LSM files
       to get info on the package at run time..
     * v1.5.x: A lot of bugfixes, and many other patches, including
       automatic verification through the usage of checksums. Version
       1.5.5 was the stable release for a long time, even though the Web
       page didn't get updated ;-). Makeself was also officially made a
       part of the [11]Loki Setup installer, and its source is being
       maintained as part of this package.
     * v2.0: Complete internal rewrite of Makeself. The command-line
       parsing was vastly improved, the overall maintenance of the
       package was greatly improved by separating the stub from
       makeself.sh. Also Makeself was ported and tested to a variety of
       Unix platforms.
     * v2.0.1: First public release of the new 2.0 branch. Prior versions
       are officially obsoleted. This release introduced the '--copy'
       argument that was introduced in response to a need for the
       [12]UT2K3 Linux installer.
     * v2.1.0: Big change : Makeself can now support multiple embedded
       tarballs, each stored separately with their own checksums. An
       existing archive can be updated with the --append flag. Checksums
       are also better managed, and the --nochown option for archives
       appeared.
     * v2.1.1: Fixes related to the Unix compression (compress command).
       Some Linux distributions made the insane choice to make it
       unavailable, even though gzip is capable of uncompressing these
       files, plus some more bugfixes in the extraction and checksum
       code.
     * v2.1.2: Some bug fixes. Use head -n to avoid problems with POSIX
       conformance.
     * v2.1.3: Bug fixes with the command line when spawning terminals.
       Added --tar, --noexec for archives. Added --nomd5 and --nomd5 to
       avoid creating checksums in archives. The embedded script is now
       run through "eval". The --info output now includes the command
       used to create the archive. A man page was contributed by Bartosz
       Fenski.

Links

     * Check out the [13]"Loki setup" installer, used to install many
       Linux games and other applications, and of which I am the
       co-author. Since the demise of Loki, I am now the official
       maintainer of the project, and it is now being hosted on
       [14]icculus.org, as well as a bunch of other ex-Loki projects (and
       a lot of other good stuff!).
     * Bjarni R. Einarsson also wrote the setup.sh installer script,
       inspired by Makeself. [15]Check it out !

Contact

   This script was written by [16]Stéphane Peter (megastep at
   megastep.org) I welcome any enhancements and suggestions.

   Contributions were included from John C. Quillan, Bjarni R. Einarsson,
   Francois Petitjean, and Ryan C. Gordon, thanks to them! If you think I
   forgot your name, don't hesitate to contact me.

   icculus.org also has a [17]Bugzilla server available that allows bug
   reports to be submitted for Loki setup, and since Makeself is a part
   of Loki setup, you can submit bug reports from there!
     _________________________________________________________________


    [18]Stéphane Peter

   Last modified: Sun May 2 00:08:49 PDT 2004

References

   1. http://www.megastep.org/makeself/makeself.run
   2. mailto:megastep@REMOVEME.megastep.org
   3. http://www.idsoftware.com/
   4. http://www.lokigames.com/products/myth2/updates.php3
   5. http://www.nvidia.com/
   6. http://www.megastep.org/makeself/makeself.run
   7. http://www.megastep.org/makeself/makeself.run
   8. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
   9. http://www.megastep.org/makeself/makeself-2.1.3.run
  10. http://cvs.icculus.org/
  11. http://www.icculus.org/loki_setup/
  12. http://www.unrealtournament2003.com/
  13. http://www.icculus.org/loki_setup/
  14. http://www.icculus.org/
  15. http://www.mmedia.is/~bre/programs/setup.sh/
  16. mailto:megastep@@megastep.org
  17. https://bugzilla.icculus.org/
  18. mailto:megastep@@megastep.org
