What is 7-Zip’s command-line argument to create a self extracting archive?

Question

I looked everywhere and couldn't find a straight answer from anyone.

If I want to package the contents of C:\Temp into a file called Temp.exe (in 7z format) that is self-extracting, how do I do it in a batch file?

This doesn't work:

"C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" a -t7z -mx5 -sfx 7z.sfx directoryname archive.exe -mmt

What I get from that is a self extracting archive called 7z.sfx . Can't figure this out.

Solution 1

I figured it out after fiddling with it:

:: zip
"C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" a archive.exe -mmt -mx5 -sfx dirname
pause

Solution 2

The issue you were having is that 7-zip doesn't like spaces in the arguments. So what you wanted was something more like:

"C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" a archive.exe -mmt -mx5 -sfx7z.sfx dirname

Solution 3

This should work:

"C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" a -t7z -mx5 -sfx archive.exe directoryname -mmt

(PS: Add Program Files\7-zip to your PATH environment variable, there by you can access the file directly as 7z.exe rather than "C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe")

Solution 4

Keep it basic. The manual says the default:

• type is 7z
• compression method is 5 ( use 0 for copy and 9 for ultra)
• (-mmt is for multi-threading and might be antiquated as the manual lacks its definition.)

So this give the basic answer as:

7z a -sfx archive.exe dir

View more solutions

Comments

[Olivier.Roger]

didn't work. see question revision.

[Olivier.Roger]

it needs to work on anyones system. since 7-zip installs to that directory by default on all windows systems, this makes the script much more likely to run on someone elses system.

[Daisetsu]

looks like you just had to move a few things around. I'm glad it worked out for you.