In theory your process should work. I haven’t done exactly the same thing but have worked on a couple of projects which extract and re-package the contents of CAB files. The process is also similar to that used by Chris Tacke in the blog post I referenced within the article (http://blog.opennetcf.com/ctacke/PermaLink,guid,073453a8-3fb1-4527-8599-f980f46ea6d4.aspx).

My guess is possibly that something was missing from your merged _setup.xml which caused some of the files to fail to be extracted. How did you go about merging the two _setup.xml files into one? If you just copied one of them this would explain why the files and registry settings from the other application did not copy across.

Please feel free to contact me via christopher@christec.co.nz if you would like to discuss this further.

Thanks for the great post.. one slight detail though.. I tried to merge the _settings of 2 cabs and copied relevant files.. Sadly though, just one of them is deployed.. I have a sneaky suspicion the SMARTD~1 is to blame.. any thoughts on how to work around this?

-Namrata

Is any tool exist for unpack cab file on desktop?
p.s : I do not mean the uncompress.

Thanks a lot.

However I got very upset when you mentioned WINZIP because I am adopting a power user philosophy that goes like:

“If there is a FreeWare or an OpenSource alternative there is no need to use Commercial Software.”

Therefore allow me to present you with these two appies:

7-Zip 4.60 Beta
7-Zip.org – 902KB (Open Source)
http://www.filehippo.com/download_7-zip/

IZArc 3.8.1550
Ivan Zahariev – 3.55MB (Freeware)
http://www.filehippo.com/download_izarc/

I hope you like them.

Regards

The structure of the files held within CAB files used to install applications is rather different between desktop and PDA. I don’t believe there is a PDA equivalent of the CFFile flag discussed.

You can get the SDK here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310618 & check Cabfmt.doc. The CFFile section of the doc discusses an “attribs” structure member. Note that I didn’t need this feature myself, so I haven’t actually tried it. Just going off what the docs say.

Good luck!

Do you have any more details (URLs for documentation etc) for how to execute a file after it is extracted? This would be a handy trick to know, and something that I wasn’t aware of.

When you refer to the Cab SDK are you talking about the CAB file documentation for desktop PCs?

The CAB file format used on desktop PCs has a whole range of flags etc not supported by the simpler Windows CE CAB file format. I couldn’t find a reference to a 0×40 flag in the documentation set I was looking at.

I would be interested because I have a situation at present where such a flag would be quite handy…

Just finished some CAB development of my own and so I remember off-hand that there is a flag that can be set to have a file executed after extraction.

Don’t know how you’re creating your cab files, Matteoathen, but according to the docs distributed with the Cab SDK, you can set 0×40 as a CFFile attribute for that effect. – If you’re hand-crafting your cabs, that is.

Ann

First of all, thanks for the reply.

The method of my “SMS listener” actually using the same method as you suggested, ie.MessageInterceptor class and EnableApplicationLauncher method.

This application works under such a condition where the the Pocket PC is assumed being not resetted or crashed.

Thanks for your kind attention.

Regards,
Matteoathen

To my knowledge there is no easy way to automatically launch an executable after the initial CAB installation process.

If you are comfortable developing native C code, you could write a “setup.dll”. A CAB file can be configured to run code within a special DLL during the installation process. You could write your setup.dll to launch your executable.

However by the sounds of it, you may need to re-think your design a little bit. For example how will your “SMS listener” application be launched if the user soft-resets their PDA, or if it crashes?

If you are comfortable developing unmanaged code, you may like to investigate reworking your “SMS listener” application into a service dll. The operating system would then provide a standardised way to communicate with your listener, and to automatically start it when the device boots etc.

Alternativly if your SMS listener is simply responding to incomming SMS messages, have you investigated using the Application Launcher functionality to have the OS automatically run your listener application whenever an SMS is received? See the following MSDN Forums posting for further details on this approach.