Currently, the only way to setup Confluence is either to:

1) Run through the web-based setup
2) Manually generate a valid confluence home directory

The second is complicated by the fact that you can't plonk a license into confluence.cfg.xml and expect it to work.

Dan Hardiker in an email:

> Ideally I would like to be able to replace the setup script with an automated version. Having it pull from a file put in a
> system property (e.g. -Dconfluence.setup.config=/path/to/confluence-setup.properties) with the ability to set a URL
> to navigate to once setup has completed would enable us to leave confluence to set itself up automatically, and then
> have it directed to our xwork plugin to deal with setting up anything custom.

Maybe instead of a system property (which can cause problems if you forget to remove it next time you start up, have Confluence check if the confluence-home directory is (a) without a confluence-cfg.xml, and (b) contains a setup.properties file. If so, do the setup from setup.properties and then delete the properties file.