Working with signed .cab files

There's been a fair amount of discussion both in private emails and on the MSHelp3 Yahoo! group about the pros and cons of requiring signed .cab files for silent installs with the new Help system.

As anyone who's been using Vista and Windows 7 knows, security is a pretty big deal these days despite all the headaches people feel it causes. Without security, you'll have even bigger headaches before you know it!

Before long I will be posting some background on some of our thinking around this requirement. In the meantime, however, I wanted to make sure that those who have need of some of the basic details around signing their cab files have access to the general details.

In addition, I'm providing some information about what you can do to test this out without having to purchase a certificate - you can create your own test certificate, which you can use for signing purpsoses on your own machine.

Here's a page (again in the Links section, as well) describing the basic process. Have fun!

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2011
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 13, 2011
  Hello Sam - the #1 thing you need to fix is to ensure that your .msha file is named "HelpContentSetup.msha" - it's an issue on our side, but that is only .msha file name we currently allow.

• Anonymous
  January 13, 2011
  Hi Paul, I've figured out that the reason for the System.UriFormatException was because I had not provided the full, quoted path to the .msha file - once I did so, the HelpLibraryManagerLauncher happily installed silently. All three files - the .msha, .mshc and .cab files - are all named correctly. :-) They do not seem to require the "constant" name of "HelpContentSetup"; my files are named differently. One thing I did notice was that if the help has already been installed, then an error is thrown during a subsequent installation. It would be great if HelpLibraryManager either updates the existing help with the newer version, or uninstalls and then reinstalls the help.

• Anonymous
  January 14, 2011
  Hmmm... Interesting. You stumbled on an inconsistency in our code logic - your .msha file name being different than HelpContentSetup.msha will only work in Silent Mode installs. If you try that with Interactive Mode the 'Next' button will not be enabled. For our next version of Help Viewer we are looking at supporting help updates from disk - currently they are principally only supported from the web, which is restricted to our content, unfortunately. We're working on expanding support for partner content scenarios. All the best, Paul

• Anonymous
  March 06, 2011
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 07, 2011
  Hello Don, please send me an email using the Email Blog Author option and I will forward you some details about how to work through the issue. I will also work on a blog post with updated details soon, but want to get you unblocked first. Sincerely, P.

• Anonymous
  July 19, 2012
  i want to install Sandcastle Helpviewer Silently using setup... when i used Silent keyword its not installing but when i removed it installed propery but showing GUI of Installation ... rc= WshShell.run ("HelpLibraryManagerLauncher.exe /product VS /version 100 /locale en-us /Silent /brandingPackage Dev10.mshc /sourceMedia HelpContentSetup.msha",0,True) Help Me.... i Dont want show my GUI window