Has anybody had success extracting the contents of a portable apps exe file?

I tried several command line utilities to no avail.

The MD5s are fine.

The files extract in Windows.

I want to avoid starting a Windows VM just to extract the file. I want to update the USB drive I use when traveling and automate the process in a shell script rather than do the pointy-clicky dance in a Windows VM.

Examples:

Firefox Portable: http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

LibreOffice Portable: http://portableapps.com/apps/office/...ffice_portable

Thanks much.

All the data you need is on the portableapps web site. The creator (John T. Haller) of many of those versions has detailed how he uses various tools to create the files and how one can create their own programs using the third party tools. He uses both a installer and a compression to help in this task. Then he creates a self extracting exe.

If you want to use windows then use universal extractor to start. If you want to use linux then use wine. Might even try 7-zip.

In some exe files there is a switch that allows just extraction. I forget what that is. Usually used for service pack extraction and other windows apps.

I can already extract the contents in Windows.

I tried unzip, p7zip, unrar, cabextract, unzipsfx.

A "7z x -y FirefoxPortable_17.0.1_English.paf.exe" extracted all its contents without difficulty. Weird toplevel directory names though.

Eric

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7z. Thanks, I missed that one.

Yeesh, yes, the extraction is a mess. Midnight commander goes haywire trying to read the results. Running ls /??/ seems to work.

Creating a package for innoextract now, see if that is cleaner at handling this Windows executable.

Eric

EDIT: unfortunately innoextract does not recognize the Firefox portable executable as a supported format.