Current status

The cab files are created using wine on linux. These cab files are then posted to a web page. This allows installation from a web browser of the program. However it isn't clear how easy this is for a teacher. So providing a way for a teacher to install the cab file or run an exe seems better.

This is an interesting way to make the exe:
http://www.pocketpcdn.com/articles/multicabinstall.html

Older Info

This is currently done using a combination of CabWiz and ezsetup. Jon Cass created a custom inf file that is feed to CabWiz for creating the cab files. then ezsetup turns those cab files into a single exe file. The inf file isn't quite right at the moment. I found this page that might be helpful setting it up:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnce21/html/appin21.asp

more info:
http://www.sundialsoft.freeserve.co.uk/cabinfo.htm
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnce30/html/appinstall30.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wcepb40/html/cxconCreatingInfFile.asp

The current problem is that the installer doesn't handle all the different platforms for the pocketPC. Because the current inf file doesn't seem to be able to specify platform and non platform specific files.

I believe that some of the superwaba tools can create this inf file automatically, but Jon wasn't able to get them to work.

Issues to resolve

• Single installer for all handheld platforms
• Automatic build of installer (seems unlikely)
• Handle updates nicely. If we release a new labbook or SensorPort will it update correcly

Ideas

• make a total of 3 cab install files: superwaba, sensorport, labbook
• this way updates to the labbook dont require downloading updates to sensorport
• it appears we can build uncompressed cab files on linux, we can use this to build a cab of the labbook, during publishing.
• on release of a labbook we can build the cab on windows.
• same goes for sensorport releases. the test version could be uncompress and the released version can be compressed.

Links

http://www.kyz.uklinux.net/cabextract.php
http://www.geekshop.be/rien/lcab/
http://www.kyz.uklinux.net/libmspack/
http://www.speakeasy.org/~russotto/chm/