MakeCab.exe and SharePoint 2007 WSP Size

So, it's been forever since I wrote a blog but I've been furiously working with SharePoint as of late. First off, I've been working on an end-to-end provisioning system that allows creation and deployment of variations including content. I'll probably blog on some of that in the future. It takes a long time but some of the problem solving has been fairly cool.

However, on another note, I'm starting to add extra images to a Feature that I'm building for a client. When I added those images, MakeCab.exe started splitting my files into two "Disks". This seemed like an easy thing to fix. However, the documentation has MANY different variables that you can set in MakeCab.exe and it's not very obvious what setting will prevent splitting across disks.

You should know that the default disk size is 1.44MB which means as soon as you add a file that puts you over the top, you then end up splitting across disks. Since my SharePoint WSP's have started getting fairly large, that's a big problem.

The Important Variable is: MaxDiskSize
which should be set to 0 (Zero).

This means, ignore all of the other variables such as MaxFileCount, MaxCabinetSize, etc.

Therefore, if you have the potential for large WSP files, use this file header in your DDF (or your script/program which generates your DDF).

;
.OPTION EXPLICIT
.set DiskDirectoryTemplate=CDROM  
.set CompressionType=MSZIP  
.set UniqueFiles="ON"
.set Cabinet="ON"
.set DiskDirectory1=
.set CabinetNameTemplate=${wsp.name}.wsp
.set MaxDiskSize=0

Special thanks to Thomas Wyrick who's working with me on my current project. He helped me out with this issue which saved tons of time. I need to take full credit for this because I typed it into my project and made it work (kidding of course...)