Installing components using auto-generated plans from Jython CLI

Question

Hi All,
for specific reasons, we want to install a set of components with fixed signatures from Jython CLI, but without appropriate plans. In fact, we want to simulate the behavior that we know from Plugin UI, i.e. linking directly to an installer of a component.
We figured the following steps are necessary within CLI code:
1) For the targeted component generate an appropriate install plan using 'pdb.p.genplan' command. This unfortunately does not create the plan within the system, but rather has to be redirected to a file.
2) Import the previously generated plan using 'pdb.p.ci' command from this file.
3) run the plan using fixed signature to install component
4) eventually remove the plan.
Now, the problem is, that step 1) generates a plan targeted for the folder '/system/autogen', but step 2) fails on importing the plan there, because the folder is owned by the system plugin. So we would end up parsing the XML file, replacing path and so on .... We definately don't want to reinvent the wheel, here.
Any help appreciated!!!
Regards,
Frank

Answer 1

First of all, thanks for the super-fast reply.
We got around with parsing using the xml.dom.minidom package in Python. Three more lines and poorer performance, but nothing you can measure against the CLI performance itself ;-)
I like the idea of using a template plan, as you suggested, because the generated ones bear another problem: We have to pipe in the plan parameters, which we don't know for sure, except for one, that is the 'markOnly' flag. So this might get us around piping in stupid dummy params.
How exactly do you wait for the plan completion? We use 'pe.p.lo', but don't know how to figure out, if it was successful or not, at all. No return code this time, and stdout isn't filled in markOnly=true mode.
Regards,
Frank