Making .CAB files

PRB

PRB

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Staff member
What's the best [free] solution for making CAB files? I'm always hunting for an application that will do this, like winzip makes ZIP files, and it always seems "clunky" and/or buggy.

Thanks!
 
Paul,
The FS9 (FS2004) SDK has a CAB file maker. It is in the CABDir SDK.

The Scenery Hall of Fame hosts the FS9 SDK -- CABDir is all the way at the bottom of the page:

http://www.scenery.org/tutorials_fs2k4_SDK.htm


Microsoft still hosts the FS9 SDK also, the links are listed in this knowledge base article - once again all the way at the bottom of the page:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555857

Links are not live from the Microsoft article so you have to cut and past to start the downloads.

:wavey:
Jack
 
place all the desired gauges into a folder with the name you want the cab file to be.
locate the cabdir.exe in the FSX SDK folders
( ... if you have the SDK installed )

mine is ...
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X SDK\SDK\SimObject Creation Kit\Cabdir SDK"

place the desired cab folder just created in this directory.

drag the and drop the folder onto the cabdir.exe icon and after a few seconds a new .cab file appears with the cab folder name

to my knowledge this only works with gauges, i haven't tried it with other file types
 
It does indeed work with any file types. Works great. Thanks, all.
 
Yep... IZark will decompile them, and the freeware FS9 CAB compiler will double compile them. (For some reason, it always does a double pass during compiling to a CAB package).



Bill
 
Please can you tell me if there is a difference between decompiling a CAB file and using WinZip to open a CAB file and extract a GAU file from it. Not at all sure why I might want to do this, but seemed like an interesting question,
thanks in advance,
Ro
:ernae:
 
I didn't cared for CAB files in my Pirat, as you may check see there is a folder with XML files inside (OK, I forgot to make them, and released Pirat with folder instead of CAB archive :173go1:)
 
rohan said:
Please can you tell me if there is a difference between decompiling a CAB file and using WinZip to open a CAB file and extract a GAU file from it. Not at all sure why I might want to do this, but seemed like an interesting question,
thanks in advance,
Ro
:ernae:
Click to expand...

There should be no difference. A CAB file is basically a form of ZIP file format, but slightly different. How different, I do not know. Could be just in the name; CAB/ZIP, etc. They both unzip the same though.



Empeck,

I often wonder if having a gauge folder instead of a CAB file is faster on the computer performance wise. Nothing has to be decompiled and held in memory if its in a gauge folder.


Bill
 
Lionheart said:
I often wonder if having a gauge folder instead of a CAB file is faster on the computer performance wise. Nothing has to be decompiled and held in memory if its in a gauge folder.
Click to expand...

In human terms, there is no discernable difference between the two scenarios. When was the last time you noticed a 0.55ms difference? :icon_lol:
 
But there does seem to be a difference among .CAB files, presumeably from the way they are created or from the utility used to create them. This has always been a bit of a mystery to me but some .CAB files cause a significant (1-3 seconds) delay when loading the aircraft or when loading the panel into FS Panel Studio, at least for me. I have been able to alleviate the delayed loading by extracting the .CAB contents and re-creating the .CAB file using CABDIR. I have not taken the time to track down why or how the slow ones have been created. I believe the most recent one was part of a Rarewings model (Alcor maybe?), and Alphasim and Just Flight models from 2-3 years ago had some of these as well.

Rick
 
There is a difference between the FS9 and FSX cabdir's

For instance the cab file for the FSX Shockwave (A2A) B-17 was make with the FS9 cabdir, if you recompile it with the FSX cabdir it loads faster.
 
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