Dot Net Thoughts

If you are working with Sharepoint or Infopath sometime you need to use makecab.exe, it is a command line utility to create cab files from Microsoft. You can use makecab utility from command prompt.

Command line output from MakeCab/?


MAKECAB [/V[n]] [/D var=value ...] [/L dir] source [destination]
MAKECAB [/V[n]] [/D var=value ...] /F directive_file [...]
source  - File to compress.
destination  - File name to give compressed file. If omitted, the
last character of the source file name is replaced
with an underscore (_) and used as the destination.
/F directives - A file with MakeCAB directives (may be repeated).
/D var=value - Defines variable with specified value.
/L dir - Location to place destination (default is current directory).
/V[n] - Verbosity level (1..3)

But I was unable to create the cab file with multiple files using this. After a long search I found one solution from MSDN – Using MakeCab.exe. Then I have created one .ddf file and using the command


makecab.exe /f Sample.ddf


And in the sample.ddf you can specify the file names.


;*** Sample Source Code MakeCAB Directive file example
;
.OPTION EXPLICIT ; Generate errors
.Set CabinetNameTemplate="Sample.cab"
.set DiskDirectoryTemplate=CDROM ; All cabinets go in a single directory
.Set CompressionType=MSZIP;** All files are compressed in cabinet files
.Set UniqueFiles="OFF"
.Set Cabinet=on
.Set DiskDirectory1="Cabs"
image1.gif
image2.gif
mystyle.xsl
manifest.xsf
myschema.xsd
script.vbs
template.xml
upgrade.xsl
;*** <the end>


I think the code is self explanatory.