CAB Kitchen (Opinions Wanted)

[volock]

NOTE: I don't mean any disrespect to the wonderful people who provide any of the utilities / apps / etc I mention, and the complaints I have with them, are not in any way the fault of the people who make them.

For quite some time I have manually merged CAB's or copied things out of others people's CABs to use in one I created myself. That way it was simpler to reinstall the things I wanted when I had to do a hard reset. This speeds up overall time you have to be "doing" the installation, along with providing a simple way to combine common tweaks.

For various reasons and situations, there are times when you simply cannot or do not want to use a custom ROM or cook one yourself. What I am proposing is a CAB Merging Utility / Kitchen. The reason I am referring to it as a kitchen, is I have made a mostly functional application to merge CAB files, but if you don't know what is in them / what you are doing, you can end up creating conflicts / being stupid. An example is one CAB applying one registry edit, for the merged cab to reverse it, or merging two seperate Theme CAB files. Currently this is resolved by merging CAB files, requiring you to specify the order to merge them in.

The idea of the full blown kitchen version is that it would be Phone Model dependent for the kitchen. It would contain a tweak / reg edit list, like Advanced Config has so you can select what tweaks you want automatically installed. In addition it'd have a collection of CAB files from here and the internet, so you could go through and decide what all you want to be included in this single CAB installer. The reason CABs may be included is for popular ones, like different themes, it can make sure you only package one theme to be installed in. Obviously it would also be able to add other CAB files you want and regedits not listed.

The other use / reason I see for it, is avoiding Soft Resets. I love advanced config and Diamond Tweak and such, but plenty of those are best after a soft reset. There's not a reason, once you have established what tweaks you want by default (or at all), that there can't be an app on your desktop with a nice GUI to make a CAB to do it for you. This is part of what I was talking about with a built in list of things to include. Note: I don't mean

I'd like to hear from people whether there is any interest in this. I'm especially interested in hearing from many of the people who write the CAB files and tweaks posted here, for whether they like the idea, and whether they would be okay in the general sense with this program stealing all of their CAB files. Although links could be provided for original author and thread, when installing a CAB thats been merged, you only retain one name for it in the installed program list.

A little background about myself. Although I don't post stuff here often, I'm a student working towards my degrees in Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, and Electrical Engineering. I have experience writing software like this, and do to a recent research project being finished, am looking for a new project to spend some time on, but don't want to waste my time if it seems I'd be the only one to use it. Currently I have a basic merging program working, and part of the developement for it dates back to a work phone where a custom/cooked ROM would be a huge no-no. I use it to have a semi complete backup for if I need to hard reset, or someone I know gets a new smartphone. For example my base install on my Touch Pro was 16 cabs: Custom Theme, 4 Different Tweaks/Reg Edit Cabs, Flashlight App, Advanced Config, the HTC updated apps and backup utility, google apps, dot net, and a few others. The install time of clicking through and installing them from my SD card was around 35 minutes, my combined CAB does it in under 10.

Lastly I want to give a large thanks to all the wonderful people here, and their hard work. I know I owe thanks to many of you and the regedits and tweaks you provide. I also want to thank anyone who replies in advance for your input.

[boredandtattooed]

good idea, but for the most part this exists in sashimi.. a cab combining tool...

check this out..a few links imbedded through the post as well http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=476687

according to this, you cant realy do 1 big cab, it cant process all the data.. also any cabs requiring user input have to be done seperately still or atleast grouped together i think...

you can remake,not combine, a cab that includes all ur stuff...but it would get pretty signifiant in size if u have alot of stuff

[volock]

Yeah I had used Sashimi in the past. I disliked it because at that point it had issues with my phone. My other complaintsabout it were having to do it all on my Handheld vs doing it on a PC and the inability to post / share easily. That being said, you're right Sashimi does have most the functionality described and is a nice piece of software that's been getting updated fairly often.

Funny enough I had seen the link you sent my from XDA, but the issues involved are different. It is possible, it's just not possible how that person wanted to do it. You can't copy contents directly from extracted cabs into each other and expect it to work. Nor can you put a CAB within a CAB and because only one CAB can be opened for installation on your phone at a time. However you can put the extracted contents into directories, and combine the install instructions manually to merge the CAB files if you know what you are doing. The idea is automating it so everyone can easily and setting it up like a kitchen so you can see a huge collection of what's out there, in addition to what you have. Like a ROM kitchen, but instead of compiling into the ROM, you compile into a CAB (obviously I realize this isn't a perfect analogy because of things custom roms can have done to them, that no CAB can ever do to the phone).

[TaylorSPJ]

you can always get a cab maker/viewer program....I use wince cab and what you could do is open all the cabs you want to combine one by one....then hit save as, and save as a .reg file. and then create a new cab with new name (Combined Cabs or something to that effect).....if you hit file then import you can choose all those cabs saved as .reg and will combine them all to one.....I would save all the .reg files in a single folder to keep it organized.

[DaOnlyRecless]

I believe this would be a great idea... Like you, I spend countless amounts of time installing multiple tweaks, utilities, and programs. I would be tempted to write a UC file, if it weren't for the multiple folders and different groups i have my cabs archived into. 1-3 big cab files that take care of it all would be superb!