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Pocket PC Installer
Written by James Fielding  [author's bio]  [read 20372 times]
Edited by Derek

   

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From PocketPCinstaller.com

How to create the installers

I desperately don't want to say much in this section.

Anyone who's put together a .zip file on their PC already knows how to make the PDA & Desktop installers, using PocketPC Installer. All you need to do is drag'n'drop the files that you want to install/copy onto your PocketPC device into this program.

The main difference is that there are upto three "clickable" tickboxes shown for each file, which let you specify whether or not you want to install/copy each file onto the device, if it's being run on a PocketPC 2002, Windows Mobile 2003 or Windows Mobile 2005 device.

In this example, I've dragged my .Net CF .cab file (MyProgram_PPC.ARMv4.CAB) into the program, at the same time as the Microsoft .Net CF, SQL, SQLCE .cab files, plus a database file.

Without me noticing, the PocketPC Installer has just been quite clever.

It knows that, on a blank device, you have to install the Microsoft .cab files in the order shown above, so has added them to my project in this specific order.

It has also checked the compatibility for each of the .cab files' details, and has found that the first one, netcf.all.wce4.armv4.cab, has a minimum CE value of v4.000. This means it can't be installed on a PocketPC 2002 device. Have a look at the first row in the screenshot above - there's no tick in the PPC2002 column, and there's no box for you to click on where you could manually add a tick.

However, the fourth file, MyProgram_PPC.ARMv4.CAB, is a different beast. I built this .cab file using Visual Studio 2003, and it's details say that it cannot be installed on a devices whose operating system version numbers are greater than v4.99 - it's not compatible with Windows Mobile 2005 devices, in other words. But this isn't true.

This .cab will install & run fine.. but the PocketPC Installer leaves this option upto you - the WM2005 checkbox as left unticked by default, but you can manually click on this box to put a tick in it, if you want to.

This works particularly well for older .cab files. My favourite PocketPC registry editor program has a CE maximum version range of v3.0 - v3.1, suggesting it'll only run on PPC2002 devices.

This .cab actually runs fine on all devices, so if I dragged it into this screen, I would be allowed to tick the WM2003 and WM2005 boxes for it.

The PocketPC Installer only restricts by the Minimum CE version, not the Maximum CE version number.

Or, to put it a simpler way, we'll give you the option of letting you install .cabs that'll probably work on your devices, but never let you install .cabs that definitely won't.

Oh, and a quick reminder - the PocketPC Installer doesn't run on Smartphones or .Net devices, which is why there is no tickboxes for these types of device.

There are also the usual range of File Copy options (copy always, copy if newer, copy if doesn't exist, etc) for any files that you just want copying onto the device. You can also specify to soft-reset the device at the end of installing, perform "quiet" installing of .cab files without the "This file exists.. overwrite?" messages, and so on.

And, as you may have noticed from the previous screenshots, you also have the option to add your own bitmap image to be displayed when either the PDA or Desktop installer file is run. Once again, this image gets compressed and stored inside both the PDA and Desktop installer files.

Finally, let's have a look at what happens on the device when you run the PDA installer.

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