SOLVED -- (was: Re: PythonCE on Windows CE 6.0)

[Banibrata Dutta]

I have used with some success lcab and cabextract (both under Linux).
However you should know, that the real culprit is the PYTHON~1.000
file, that is a binary result from the _setup.xml «compilation». That
is, you need to fix that file AND _setup.xml, and then recombine the
files (THE ORDER IS RELEVANT) into a new .CAB file.
Consider reading http://www.cabextract.org.uk/wince_cab_format/
I was able to «fix» the 000 file and the setup.xml, and ended up
with an installable .CAB file, but after installing it simply did not
work (the .exe has icon, but fails to start).

Thanks Lachezar. I was almost afraid that I'd have to adopt that route, but
I found a rather easy shortcut.

All I had to do was to use the trial version (30 day trial) of *WinCE CAB
Manager* <http://www.ocpsoftware.com/products.php>
and set the --

ProcessorType = ALL (it was originally set to Strong-Arm / XScale, id=2577)
Maximum OS Version = 6.99 (it was originally set to 5.99). Apparently, it is
fine to change all these versions to 0.0 as well.

Save the CAB file, and installed it in WinCE6.0 machine, and it was all
fine. In fact I have the Python2.5 shell running on this device, as
expected, at the moment.

Unfortunately, the WinCE installer removes the .CAB file after successful
installation, but if someone's interested, I could recreate the .CAB.

Wondering if the owners of thie PythonCE project would like to archive this
.CAB file, especially under the category being compatible with WinCE 6.0 !!

On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 11:42 AM, Gadget Steve (HM)

From: Banibrata Dutta
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 6:37 AM
Subject: Re: [PythonCE] PythonCE on Windows CE 6.0

On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 10:35 AM, Banibrata Dutta

On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 10:31 AM, Jake Anderson <

In attempting to install PythonCE (latest, downloaded from
sourceforge), using the PythonCE.WM.cab file, on a Windows CE 6.0
mini-laptop (7" screen w/ 800x480 res, ARM VT-8500 300MHz CPU, and

256MB

DDR, 2GB Flash SSD), I get the following message popup...
Setup Failed: The application cannot run on this device type. Please
install the application specific to this device type.
Could someone kindly explain the reason why the Setup Failed. In the
past I've installed several application which are originally WM apps,
successfully on this WinCE6.0 device, without any issues.
What could I do, to have PythonCE installed on this machine ?
sounds like its not liking whatever CPU is set in the cab

Thanks for the reply, Jake. AFAIK, the CPU for which the

PythonCE.WM.cab

is built, is ARM (family). Of course, ARM family is quite wide, and

slight

differences do exist in instruction set, this is almost the first

time, I

ran into this could of trouble. :-)
Would building PythonCE (cross compiling) specifically my machine help

?

Wondering if this is the culprint... this is what I find in the
_setup.xml inside the .cab file!! Which effectively means that that cab
would not install when OSVersion = 6.00 !!!
<parm name="ProcessorType" value="2577" />
<parm name="OSVersionMin" value="4.0" />
<parm name="OSVersionMax" value="5.99" />
<parm name="BuildNumberMin" value="0" />
<parm name="BuildNumberMax" value="-536870912" />
Don't know enough of Windows development to say for sure.
--
regards,
thats what I would wager is the issue

sure. got any ideas on how i could edit the .cab file contents ? i tried
the approach of using WinZIP / WinRAR on PC to extract and re-make the

CAB

file as a PKzip file, after editing the .XML, but that approach didn't

work.

on trying to use some other CAB-editing tools s.a. i6comp* -- they can't
even open the .CAB file, citing some reason as .hdr file not being found

in

the .cab !!
________________________________
You could try editing it in place with 7-zip, (www.7-zip.org), - still

not

sure it would work but thanks to the oddities of .cab files but it is

one of

the few archive manipulation programs that I know of with an edit option
when you are browsing an archive.

Thanks for the suggestion, Steve.
Have been reading up a bit on the WinCE / WinMobile .CAB file structure,

and

looks like _setup.xml is unfortunately not the only place where the
MaxVersion parameter is stored. Apparently, there is an older mechanism

of

storing such parameters in a binary file, still used for backward
compatability reasons. This brings me back to the point of needing a

tool,

or a "right way" of doing this. So, 7Zip method may have to wait (as last
resort).
For the moment, I'm somewhat hopeful of having found a potential solution

in

form of a tool specifically meant to do this type of WinCE .CAB file
editing. It is a WinCECABManager.exe, a commercial tool, but hopefully

will

allow me to edit it. There are some other, convoluted mechanisms using

some

command-line tools, but that require Visual-Studio 2005 with the CE dev
environment plugins etc., which I don't have :-(
Shall share an update here.
--
regards,
BD
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