Windows Phone Thoughts: Compressed CABs for Pocket PC and Smartphone

Neill Enns, program manager in Visual Studio for Devices, recently touched on the subject of compressed CABs in his blog. CABs (cabinet files) are a sort of setup files that can execute on Pocket PCs and Smartphones and while doing so install an application/files. A common method of deploying applications is to distribute CAB-files either by simply copying/sending them out or by linking to them on web pages and have Pocket Internet Explorer install the CAB directly.

By compressing CAB files you'll get smaller files which is a good thing in this industry. RAM and bandwidth is not free.

"At a partner event yesterday I was asked if it was possible to generate compressed CAB files for Smartphone and Pocket PC. It turns out the answer is yes and no. All Smartphone devices support compressed CAB files, and cabwizsp.exe (the tool for creating Smartphone CABs) generates compressed CAB files automatically. Pocket PC devices do not support compressed CABs. Cabwiz.exe, the tool for creating Pocket PC CABs, does not even implement creating compressed CAB files. If you have one of the preview drops of Visual Studio 2005 you can use the new cabwiz.exe tool (this version works for both Pocket PC and Smartphone) that's in it to generate compressed CAB as well. To do so you have to add the /compress flag, as the default is to generate uncompressed CABs. These compressed cabs will work on all Smartphone devices, and Pocket PC devices running a future version of Windows Mobile (but none of the current ones)."