CABviaActiveSync FREE Edition Released

[Raphael Salgado]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.modaco.com/CABviaActiveSync-FREE-Edition-now-availableand33-t243034.html' target='_blank'>http://www.modaco.com/CABviaActiveS...33-t243034.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Last week, nedge2k and I were lamenting how much of a nuisance it was to install CABs on the phone. Sure, it's not complex, but there are a bunch of applications out there to try and choose from that do it (one by myself from a long time ago included!), once you've installed a CAB you need to keep a copy of it for future installs, it doesn't integrate with ActiveSync and - well - in general, it's a bit painful. With this in mind, I mentioned to nedge2k that writing an application to integrate CABs with the ActiveSync installer wouldn't theoretically be very hard. This morning, I actually got the inspiration to do something about it... so it's my pleasure to introduce CABviaActiveSync 1.0."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/salgado-20060718-cvas.jpg" /><br /><br />Well, this freeware program is a certainly a blessing! From new Windows Mobile owners who don't know what to do with CAB files, to power users who want nothing but the CAB file to do with as they please, <i>CABviaActiveSync</i> serves it purpose brilliantly. With a right-click context menu option like you see above, the CAB file will instantly be installed on your Windows Mobile device, and will also be archived in the ActiveSync folder on your desktop. Now, if we can get more developers to have CAB installers of their programs available for download (and shy away from those bloated desktop installers throwing additional demos and junk at me), I'd be a happy camper. ;)

[goestoeleven]

This is a major league boon to the Windows Mobile community!

[ctmagnus]

I can see this app being very useful, except for the case of apps that provide multiple arm-based installers without clearly delineating which installers go with which os version. Phatware and Fitaly come to mind. I managed to figure out which OS's accept which Fitaly cab files, but PhatNotes has always been a mystery to me. On the other side of things, developers that clearly label their installers as [appname].wm2003.cab and [appname].wm5.cab or similar are a godsend, not to mention the developers that only use one cab file regardless of platform.

[gwinter]

... to power users who want nothing but the CAB file to do with as they please ...

CAB file is so... passé. Installations for programs are not needed all the time. Sure, if you'd like to associate a file extension to a program, or register some components, it would be much easier to do an install. However, what I don't get is programs that consist of a single executable getting wrapped up in a CAB. Normally I would just grab just the necessary files out of the CAB and run it. Hmm... that's why my Installed Program List is almost empty.

But anyway, this free utility is certainly welcomed!

[Mike Dimmick]

Sadly, it'll only work if you're an administrator on your local machine. The registry entries that the ActiveSync Application Manager uses to store applications are under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE branch and so aren't writable by unprivileged users. There's also no documented way of removing applications from here!

Because we can no longer call wceload.exe from within a running CAB install, which we used to do to deploy Compact Framework and SQL Server CE/Mobile from within a larger package, we've moved away from the outermost package being a CAB to being a device native EXE containing a ZIP, which gets us compression support on both Windows Mobile 5.0 and older devices, and on custom CE platforms too. It's on my to-do list to write a utility to use RAPI to copy such a package EXE to the device and launch it from there.