unshield
Description:	Tool and library to extract CAB files
Download:	unshield.lha       (TIPS: Use the right click menu if your browser takes you back here all the time)
Size:	2Mb
Version:	1.5.1
Date:	25 Feb 2025
Author:	David Eriksson, ported by George Sokianos and Steffen Haeuser
Submitter:	Steffen Haeuser
Homepage:	https://github.com/AmigaLabs/libs-ports/tree/main/unshield
Category:	utility/archive
Replaces:	utility/archive/unshield.lha
License:	Other
Distribute:	yes
Min OS Version:	4.1
FileID:	13212
Comments:	1
Snapshots:	0
Videos:	0
Downloads:	286  (Current version)
	2128  (Accumulated)
Votes:	0 (0/0)  (30 days/7 days)

Ported from the v1.5.1 release as found at https://github.com/twogood/unshield

This new version can also depack files which have paths like ./Files/... (with
"./" at the start). Also additionally to the AmigaOS4 version a WarpOS version
and a 68060 version are included.

To install a Pocket PC application remotely, an installable Microsoft Cabinet
File is copied to the /Windows/AppMgr/Install directory on the PDA and then the
wceload.exe is executed to perform the actual install. That is a very simple
procedure.

Unfortunately, many applications for Pocket PC are distributed as InstallShield
installers for Microsoft Windows, and not as individual Microsoft Cabinet Files.
That is very impractical for users of other operating systems, such as Linux or
FreeBSD.

An installer created by the InstallShield software stores the files it will
install inside of InstallShield Cabinet Files. It would thus be desirable to be
able to extract the Microsoft Cabinet Files from the InstallShield Cabinet Files
in order to be able to install the applications without access to Microsoft
Windows.

The format of InstallShield Cabinet Files is not officially documented but there
are two tools available for Microsoft Windows that extracts files from
InstallShield installers, and they are distributed with source code included.
These tools are named "i5comp" and "i6comp" and can be downloaded from the
Internet.

One major drawback with these tools are that for the actual decompression of the
files stored in the InstallShield Cabinet Files they require the use of code
written by InstallShield that is not available as source code. Luckily, by
examining this code with the 'strings' tool, I discovered that they were using
the open source zlib library (www.gzip.org/zlib) for decompression.

I could have modified i5comp and i6comp to run on other operating systems than
Microsoft Windows, but I preferred to use them as a reference for this
implementation. The goals of this implementation are:

    Use a well known open source license (MIT)

    Work on both little-endian and big-endian systems

    Separate the implementation in a tool and a library

    Support InstallShield versions 5 and later

    Be able to list contents of InstallShield Cabinet Files

    Be able to extract files from InstallShield Cabinet Files