cabextract 1.2 review

cabextract is Free Software for extracting Microsoft cabinet files, also called .CAB files, on UNIX or UNIX-like systems

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 43K Developer: Stuart Caie

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cabextract is Free Software for extracting Microsoft cabinet files, also called .CAB files, on UNIX or UNIX-like systems. cabextract is distributed under the GPL license.

cabextract is based on the portable LGPL libmspack library. cabextract supports all special features and all compression formats of Microsoft cabinet files.

Microsoft cabinet files are used by Microsoft and others to distribute all kinds of data and software: core Web fonts, Longhorn videos, operating system updates and video codecs, to give some examples.

Installation:

The `configure' shell script attempts to guess correct values for various system-dependent variables used during compilation. It uses those values to create a `Makefile' in each directory of the package. It may also create one or more `.h' files containing system-dependent definitions.

Finally, it creates a shell script `config.status' that you can run in the future to recreate the current configuration, and a file `config.log' containing compiler output (useful mainly for debugging `configure').

It can also use an optional file (typically called `config.cache' and enabled with `--cache-file=config.cache' or simply `-C') that saves the results of its tests to speed up reconfiguring. (Caching is disabled by default to prevent problems with accidental use of stale cache files.)

If you need to do unusual things to compile the package, please try to figure out how `configure' could check whether to do them, and mail diffs or instructions to the address given in the `README' so they can be considered for the next release.

If you are using the cache, and at some point `config.cache' contains results you don't want to keep, you may remove or edit it.

The file `configure.ac' (or `configure.in') is used to create `configure' by a program called `autoconf'. You only need `configure.ac' if you want to change it or regenerate `configure' using a newer version of `autoconf'.

The simplest way to compile this package is:

1. `cd' to the directory containing the package's source code and type `./configure' to configure the package for your system.

If you're using `csh' on an old version of System V, you might need to type `sh ./configure' instead to prevent `csh' from trying to execute `configure' itself.

Running `configure' takes awhile. While running, it prints some messages telling which features it is checking for.

2. Type `make' to compile the package.

3. Optionally, type `make check' to run any self-tests that come with the package.

4. Type `make install' to install the programs and any data files and documentation.

5. You can remove the program binaries and object files from the source code directory by typing `make clean'. To also remove the files that `configure' created (so you can compile the package for a different kind of computer), type `make distclean'.

There is also a `make maintainer-clean' target, but that is intended mainly for the package's developers. If you use it, you may have to get all sorts of other programs in order to regenerate files that came with the distribution.

What's New in This Release:
A new "test" mode was added that verifies archive integrity and prints MD5 checksums of the archived files.
Several bugs in LZX, Quantum, and UTF-8 decoding were fixed.
Files greater than two gigabytes can be searched for embedded cabinet files.
The software now compiles cleanly on a greater number of platforms.