Download installers¶

Evergreen includes the function Save-EvergreenApp that simplifies downloading application installers that are returned from Get-EvergreenApp.

All applications will return at least a Version and URI property with many returning additional properties including Architecture, Language, Type, Ring, Channel and Release, dependent on the target application. Additionally, the installer file name is typically determined dynamically with the URI property.

To retrieve and download an application installer, we need to use code similar to the following that the filters for the required download and determines the file name before using Invoke-WebRequest to download the file.

$Teams = Get-EvergreenApp -Name MicrosoftTeams | Where-Object { $_.Architecture -eq "x64" -and $_.Ring -eq "General" }
$TeamsInstaller = Split-Path -Path $Teams.Uri -Leaf
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $Teams.Uri -OutFile ".\$TeamsInstaller" -UseBasicParsing

This is a simple example, but an application with additional properties and output values is likely to require more complex code to download. For example, Microsoft OneDrive includes a few additional properties and several items in the returned object

Version      : 89.0.774.68
Platform     : Windows
Channel      : Stable
Release      : Enterprise
Architecture : x64
Date         : 1/4/2021 7:29:00 pm
Hash         : 6E1856B2972688D109F550B0A62C264E9829FF1F392E3BE0FC308900AEFD3455
URI          : https://msedge.sf.dl.delivery.mp.microsoft.com/filestreamingservice/files/a67b9c83-1671-45ab-982f-e02318eeffc9/MicrosoftEdgeEnterpriseX64.msi

Save-EvergreenApp accepts the output from each application and simplifies downloading the installers included in an application object by determining the target file name, and constructing a target directory path based on the properties in the application output.

Get-EvergreenApp -Name MicrosoftOneDrive | Save-EvergreenApp -Path "C:\Apps\OneDrive"

Save-EvergreenApp will create a folder structure below the path provided (e.g. C:\Apps\OneDrive) built from the various properties in the application object passed to it. A folder structure, based on the available properties in the following list will be created in this order - Channel, Release, Ring, Version, Language, Architecture.

Save-EvergreenApp will return the path to each downloaded file that can be used passed to other functions in a script.

In the example using MicrosoftOneDrive above, Save-EvergreenApp returns output similar to this:

Path
----
C:\Apps\OneDrive\Enterprise\20.169.0823.0008\OneDriveSetup.exe
C:\Apps\OneDrive\Production\21.030.0211.0002\OneDriveSetup.exe
C:\Apps\OneDrive\Production\21.052.0314.0001\OneDriveSetup.exe
C:\Apps\OneDrive\Insider\21.056.0318.0001\OneDriveSetup.exe

To download application installers into a single directory, the -CustomPath parameter can be used. Note that an application object can return multiple versions or channels of an application with the same installer name - when using -CustomPath, the first installer will be saved and subsequent installers with the same file name will be skipped.

Therefore, when using -CustomPath, it would best to filter the output from Get-EvergreenApp before passing it to Save-EvergreenApp. For example:

Get-EvergreenApp -Name MicrosoftOneDrive | `
    | Where-Object { $_.Ring -eq "Enterprise" -and $_.Architecture -eq "AMD64" -and $_.Type -eq "exe" } | `
    Save-EvergreenApp -Path "C:\Apps\OneDrive"

Parameters¶

InputObject¶

An object returned from Get-EvergreenApp with at least the Version and URI properties.

Path¶

The parent directory under which a directory structure will be created and application installers saved into. Typically the target path used will be a path per application.

CustomPath¶

The target directory into which the application installers will be directly saved into. Typically the target path used will be a path per application.

Verbose¶

The -Verbose parameter can be useful for observing application downloads and save paths, including troubleshooting when the expected application details are not returned. When using the -Verbose parameter, Invoke-WebRequest will show download progress which significantly impacts download speed. To suppress download progress, add the -NoProgress switch parameter as well.

-NoProgress¶

Save-EvergreenApp uses Invoke-WebRequest to download target application installers. Download progress is suppressed by default for faster downloads; however, when -Verbose is used, download progress will be displayed. Use -NoProgress with -Verbose to suppress download progress while also displaying verbose output.

-Force¶

Forces this function to download the target application installers from the URI property even if they already exist in the target directory.

Alias¶

Save-EvergreenApp has an alias of sea to simplify downloading applications, for example:

PS /Users/aaron> gea Slack | sea -Path /Users/aaron/Temp/Slack