Cascading behavior of package generation/installation based on variable parameters

摘要

The present invention relates generally to computer systems, and more particularly relates to a method and system for automatically installing software applications in a computer environment. The installation of new software packages or upgrading of existing packages often requires a great deal of data to be transferred, copied, decompressed and installed, consuming valuable communication bandwidth, storage space and processing power. The invention greatly reduces the demand on system resources by: identifying the files desired to be downloaded and installed; sorting these identified files into parameter-specific and parameter-independent groups; and generating a separate package each of the separate groups of identified files. In this way, separate parameter-specific and parameter-independent software packages are generated, so only the necessary software packages need to be processed to install new software, or upgrade an existing software package.