Windows CE: Adding two files of the same name to two different folders in the file system (Part two of one)

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Based on some recent blog comments I wanted to add some additional information to the existing Windows CE: Adding two files of the same name to two different folders in the file system. blog post.

The first comment is that you don't need to copy your files to the flat release directory, although it's common practice to do so - you can use BIB files to copy files from any location on the build machine and rename the files into the \Windows folder on the target image. Take the example below - I have a source file in this folder C:\demo\CE6_Folder_Test\ThirdFox\ThirdFox.txt, I want the file to be called "fox.txt" and mapped to the \Demo\ThirdFox folder on the device.

My totally contrived operating system image contains three versions of the "fox.txt" file, each in different folders - I need to use the BIB file to add the base file to the \Windows folder of my device image - I can then use .DAT files to map the file from the \Windows folder to its final destination, which, in this case will be \Demo\ThirdFox.

The BIB file can be used to grab the original file (called ThirdFox.txt) and add this to the \Windows folder as Fox3.txt (yes, I could have kept the name the same, but that's not the point) - here's how - notice the third line of the FILES section adding fox3.txt.

 ;
; Copyright (c) 2005 Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.
;
;
; NOTE: if any of the .EXE's included in this component are .NETCF
; you will need to move them to the FILES section.
;
MODULES
;  Name            Path                                           Memory Type
;  --------------  ---------------------------------------------  -----------

FILES
;  Name            Path                                           Memory Type
;  --------------  ---------------------------------------------  -----------
fox1.txt    $(_FLATRELEASEDIR)\fox1.txt            NK
fox2.txt    $(_FLATRELEASEDIR)\fox2.txt            NK
fox3.txt    C:\demo\CE6_Folder_Test\ThirdFox\ThirdFox.txt            NK

Now that we have Fox3.txt added to the \Windows folder we can now map this to the final destination folder on the device using the .DAT file, like so...

 root:-Directory("\"):-Directory("Demo")
Directory("\Demo"):-Directory("FirstFox")
Directory("\Demo\FirstFox"):-File("fox.txt","\windows\fox1.txt")

root:-Directory("\"):-Directory("Demo")
Directory("\Demo"):-Directory("SecondFox")
Directory("\Demo\SecondFox"):-File("fox.txt","\windows\fox2.txt")

root:-Directory("\"):-Directory("Demo")<br>Directory("\Demo"):-Directory("ThirdFox")<br>Directory("\Demo\ThirdFox"):-File("fox.txt","\windows\fox3.txt")

Interestingly, if we open the NK.BIN file in Visual Studio 2005 (our final operating system image for this example) we can see each of the files that are included in the final operating system image, you will notice (simply because there's a big red line around it) that there only the fox1.txt, fox2.txt, and fox3.txt files are in the image - the 'copies' of these files (and the folder structure needed to hold the files) are not created until boot time. The file system will copy any files specified in the initobj.dat file into the folders they are listed for. Keep in mind that all ROM files exist in the \Windows\ folder already, so copying EXE and DLL, or other files to RAM-based folders in a DAT file wastes space.

nk-expanded

- Mike