Baking CAB's into ROM

[drdrewusaf]

For the ROM chefs here:

I'm a kitchen noob, but I've successfully made my own ROM based on Unified ROM Kitchen 1.0 AKU 3.5. The only instructions I have used are the readme's w/ the Kitchen and the "How To" from the "How To" sticky:
http://ppcgeeks.com/greetings-this-m...rom-t2609.html


I'm trying streamline my ROM by "baking" in as many of my programs as possible and I'm wondering what I can do, if anything, with the programs that have setup.dll in the CAB (I saw the post in the How To with the same prob, but the answer is a little vague). When I flashed the phone and tried my progs, about 90% of them worked (even some that had the setup.dll in the cab) but a couple didn't. My main concern is Flash for PPC. School me please! Thanks!



Drew

BTW...I did search the forums for "setup.dll" but the search gave me returns with the word "setup" instead of setup.dll. That's a lot of posts to sift through...

[nickm]

colonel has a small script on his latest ROM that will install cab files when doing a ROM update. Maybe he would be willing to share it. The folder and text file are easy to get. But I am not sure if anything need be entered in the registry.

[luv2chill]

Cabs that have a setup.dll do things that aren't visible when you just deconstruct the cab file. So in those cases you have to use detective skills. Which means that you have to dump the registry, install the cab file, dump the registry again, and use a program like CompareIt or WinDiff to reveal the changes.

It is complex because there will be changes in there that have nothing to do with the install itself (because the phone is always writing stuff into the registry), and there will also be entries that the cab file puts in that you don't want to use if you're making an OEM package from it (like the uninstall data). The same situation applies if any of the dll files are self-registering (of which flash 7 is one).

So unless you're pretty familiar with the content of the device's registry, you are probably better off leaving the more complex cabs to people that know how to get the right entries out of a diff. There's no list of steps or anything--it just sort of comes with experience.

I have good news for you though, I made an OEM package for Flash 7 already--it's in my subfolder of the Kitchen OEMs folder on the FTP site.

I'm not really going to take requests though... making OEMs is time consuming and I am near burnout anyway from the Unified ROM project. Maybe there can be a poll or something where people can vote for the more popular apps.

Edit: I don't want to discourage you from playing around with dumping regs and diffing, etc. if you want to do so. But if you do, don't upload them to the site unless you are positive that they work fully. We have had quite a lot of non-functional OEMs uploaded by (well-meaning) people that didn't test them first.

[nickm]

I was comparing ROM registeries last night , that is why I suggested the approach Colonel has. For a newbie it is the perfect ingredients for cooking.

Originally Posted by luv2chill

So unless you're pretty familiar with the content of the device's registry, you are probably better off leaving the more complex cabs to people that know how to get the right entries out of a diff. There's no list of steps or anything--it just sort of comes with experience.

[drdrewusaf]

Thanks for lookin out. I'm more than skilled in the windows reg, and I'm pretty comfortable in the PPC's reg, so I'll take a look around. I also get what you mean with the differences, so I'll definitely be careful. Again thanks for the help!


Drew

[colonel]

Yes, but my technique will not save rom space. It is just a automated customization process kinda like your Extrom install.

And, yes, I am going to have a patch with instructions as to how to do this for your own roms.

[drdrewusaf]

How bout this, if I'm not planning on distributing my ROM at all, could I do the following and have the same success?

1) Flash to the naked base ROM
2) Install all of my programs and set them up
3) Back up the entire registry
4) Copy all pertinent program files (including shortcuts) from the phone for placement in OEM folder
5) Compare the copied files to the files in the original CABs to make sure I don't miss any files
6) Run through the backed up reg and change the paths that have "program files" in the value to the "windows" directory (with discretion of course) because that's where all baked in items end up (as far as I know)
7) Fix the shortcuts to point to the win dir
8) Do the normal add-to-the-ROM stuff (uuid's, dsm's, rgu's)
9) Take the reg file and put it into a CAB
10) Put the CAB in the ExtROM to be run as THE "customization" (I don't run any others)
11) Build the ROM and flash it to the phone


I understand that ALL of the settings I changed may not transfer over, but this sounds like a winner to me. Unless I missed something above.


Drew

[luv2chill]

Give it a try... can't hurt anything.

Keep in mind that there are apps that can't work properly with all of their files in \Windows. Some apps need to see some files in specific places (or subfolders from where the main files are) so make sure you use initflashfiles to copy any such files to where they need to be.

That method is still going to grab the uninstall info. But as you don't try to uninstall anything then that may not be a problem. I'm not sure of any possible consequences of overwriting some of the hard-core OS registry keys but there's only one way to find out.

Please report back on your results. Good luck.