Hint to all developer distributing TC tools and plugins

[Nigurrath]

Hi all,
due to the increasing of Totalcmd directory following to so many plugins and tools I would suggest to all the authors here to use ASPACK to compress executables and dlls (wlx,wfx and wcx too).
This ofter reduces of a lot the space used (especially for those programs and plugins made in Delphi) and in the evaluation version allows to compress any file in stardard way (no max compression allowed in evaluation) ..

You'll have to test it after packing operation took place, but ofter doesn't create problems

The only think you have to warn about is to not compress resources when compressing plugins. This in my experience sometime gives problems to TC.

[André Martin]

I recommend UPX (http://upx.sourceforge.net) which is freeware/open source and seems to have a better compression ratio...
Btw. the POP3/SMTP EmailPlugin was compressed with UPX...

[Renard_Roux]

2Nigurrath
good question. but AFAIK the only gain you may get with packers is hard disk space benefit, but not RAM memory benefit cauze when the tool / plugin runs - it runs in unpacked mode and takes RAM memory as unpacked one and even more as it neeeds to be unpacked.

So this is the inversed relation and your suggestion may be usefull only in case you have 4 giga hard disk. In this way you may pack tool/ plugins by youself.
Please correct me if im wrong.

[lzvk25]

It maybe a good idea, however, could somebody help us with the corresponding Multiarc configuration for UPX ?
And sorry for my ignorance, but what is "ASPACK" ? And if it is another packer, where can we find it ?

[Aezay]

Please read this: http://www.jrsoftware.org/striprlc.php
Scroll down to the "Why not use an EXE compressor?" section.

[Hacker]

Another benefit is the decreased download size.

Roman

[Hacker]

lzvk25,
could somebody help us with the corresponding Multiarc configuration for UPX ?

You don't need Multiarc, just run UPX from the command line

Code: Select all

upx --best --crp-ms=999999 --nrv2b -o result_2b.exe origfile.exe
upx --best --crp-ms=999999 --nrv2d -o result_2d.exe origfile.exe

and keep the smaller file.


what is "ASPACK" ? And if it is another packer, where can we find it ?

http://www.aspack.com/aspack.html
AFAIK TC is packed with ASPACK, even though UPX has the better ratio (by a few KB).


Aezay,
Don't forget about the benefits, too.

BTW: How did you get such colored controls in your applications (the Color Presets and the connection checker)?

TIA
Roman

[Aezay]

Hacker> Another benefit is the decreased download size.
If I release a file, i will compress it with rar 1st. The difference between a rar packed aspack/upx packed exe; and a rar packed unpacked exe is small. u may have to read this twice to get it

Hacker> BTW: How did you get such colored controls in your applications (the Color Presets and the connection checker)?
If u mean the listview, I just do a custom draw. The others are just by changing the properties of the vcl controls.

[Renard_Roux]

2lzvk25
Well, 'packer' is not 'archiver'. it does not compress file to store it in diminished size as archiver does. Packer simply compresses executable files with all internal file resources to make the file less in size.
In fact A LOT OF sowtware nowadays is packed with packers but this is done mainly to protect programs against reversed engineering aka 'cracking'.

[Renard_Roux]

Another benefit is the decreased download size.

don't tell me you have 28 k modem on analogue telephone line ( if u know what that means)

To my knowledge TC is packed with Asprotect, but i m not a Hacker

[Maxwish]

Just some thoughts:

- Packing exe's only helps if you have a small one (phun intended),
In the DOS days with 20 MB harddisks it was pretty common, but today, with using 10+ GIG harddisks, what's a few 100 KB going to matter ? Cleaning out your 60 MB temporary internet files will save you more space!
- Packing is not 100% reliable. Especially with overlapping code and packing of resources.
- When using packing with BETA plugins: I'll always be wondering if the bug is from the code or from the packing...
- Packing can protect your code from lame hex editing, but will not protect it from die hard crackers (example: TCMD is packed with ASpack but is still being cracked)
- UPX has my preference above ASPack, because it's open source, free and you can decompress your execuables with it (upx -d)
- A nice GUI for UPX is upx graphical:http://www.paehl.de/home.htm

[lzvk25]

Thank you. Now I know a little bit more !

[Nigurrath]

Hi all,
here's the configuration for MultiArc for this packer..very nice!

One only problem: I'm still not able to decompress packers, could someone fix this? Credits will go to all who'll contributes of course and we'll can send it to MultiArc author after it's stable.

Code: Select all

; -----------------------------------------------------------------------
; WC MultiArc config addon for UPX 190beta compressed files
; Unpacker:	upx v1.9 
; Author:	adapted for MultiArc by Frumento Enrico
; Website:	http://web.cefriel.it/~frumento
; -----------------------------------------------------------------------
;
[UPX Compress 190beta]
TypeName=UPX
ID=55 50 58 
IDPos=992, 512, 552
Extension=EXE,DLL
Archiver=D:\wincmd\PK-plugin\upx.exe
Start="--------------------"
End="^WARNING: this is an unstable beta version"
Format0="zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz -> pppppppppppppppppppppp nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn"
Extract="%P -d %FQ -o%AQAW"
;Extract="%P -d %AQAW"
List="%P -q -l --no-color %AQA"
Test="%P -t -q --no-color %FQ"
Add="%P -9 -q --compress-icons=0 --all-methods %FQ -o%AQ"
IgnoreErrors=0
Debug=0
UnixPath=0
SkipDirsInFileList=1
SkipEmptyNames=1
BatchUnpack=0
SearchForUglyDirs=0
AskMode=0
SkipLIST=0
; -----------------------------------------------------------------------

[fabiochelly]

I never had any problem with packed software.
In fact, I noticed that aspacked programs load faster because unpacking in memory is faster than disk reading.

[Maxwish]

Wouldn't you make the multiarc addon for stable v1.24 ?