The granularity at which WiX v3 patching operates is a Fragment. This means 
that any updated files authored in that Fragment will be packaged into the 
patch.

When you say the files have not changed, I assume you mean that you haven't 
changed their source code. But most likely they got new file versions and are 
physically different than the ones in the baseline. The default file comparer 
in WiX does simple byte comparison and won't detect version changes. This is 
pretty difficult problem to tackle.

Depending on where you are in your product cycle, I see these possibilities:

1) You haven't shipped the baseline yet:
- Refactor the authoring so that each Component is in its own Fragment.

2) You have shipped the baseline already:
- Implement a binder extension that overrides the file comparer and has a file 
list or something of things that you know have or have not changed;
- Write a script that would copy the unchanged baseline files on top of the 
upgrade files before producing the upgrade MSIs - then the default file 
comparer will not see the differences;
- Assuming you use wixpdbs to create the patches, write a special tool that 
would re-fragment your components so that each of them is in its own component 
- you would run this tool on both the baseline wixpdb and the upgrade wixpdb 
before creating the transforms;
- Use admin images patching instead - WiX v3 can produce patches based on admin 
images and the Fragment issue doesn't apply - you would need to change your 
build process to create admin images and then run torch on them.

-----Original Message-----
From: JWalker [mailto:improvi...@yahoo.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 02, 2009 6:54 PM
To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.
Subject: [WiX-users] Extra Files in Patch

Hi, I am using the WiX-only approach described in the wix3 chm to create patch 
packages. In some cases lots of extra files (files that have not changed from 
the baseline version) are being included in the patch, maybe hundreds. They are 
not referenced in the patch.wxs file, and I have no idea how or why they got 
there. If I view the patch in orca, I see that the PatchAdded bit has been set 
on the attribute column for these files but no other differences. They seem to 
come from the same component group as the changed files, though. This not only 
makes the .msp file huge, but it will overwrite files from previous patches. 
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!



      
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