Windows XP in a Nutshell

Name

Cabinet (CAB) Maker — \windows\system32\makecab.exe; diantz.exe

Synopsis

Cabinet file (.cab ) compression utility

To Open

Command Prompt → makecab

Usage

makecab [/v[n]] [/d var=value] [/l dir] source [destination]
makecab [/v[n]] [/d var=value] /f directive_file

Description

A cabinet file is a compressed archive commonly used to package application installation files. Cabinets are similar to .zip files, although there are added features such as a rudimentary script system intended to install and register application components.

There are two ways to use the Cabinet Maker. First, you can compress one or more files directly, like this:

makecab \windows\greenstone.bmp greenstone.cab

which compresses the file, greenstone.bmp, into the greenstone.cab archive. The new cabinet file, greenstone.cab, is created automatically in the current directory; if it already exists, it is replaced with the new archive. Unfortunately,wildcards (*.*) aren’t allowed in the source, so you can only specify one file at a time. This is where the second usage of the Cabinet Maker comes in: instead of specifying options and files directly, a single plain text file, called a directive file (.ddf) is used. The simplest directive file lists all the files to include. A line beginning with a semicolon is treated as a comment.

Assuming the lines:

;Example directive file
c:\windows\greenstone.bmp
c:\windows\rhododendron.bmp

are saved into a file called test.ddf, the Makecab command would then look like this:

makecab ...