On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 11:41 PM, Richard <[email protected]> wrote: > In article <[email protected]>, > "Wesley W. Terpstra" <[email protected]> writes: >> [...] For such a big >> savings in download-time I think that's a reasonable trade-off. > > Have you been receiving complaints about download times?
Actually, yes. However, even more worrisome to me are the complaints I've *not* received from people who simply decided it was too big and didn't bother downloading it. > Doing the simplest thing that could possibly work is generally the > best approach with installers. True, and I still provide the non-7zip msi as well. As a footnote, I've found a way to radically improve the compression of both the 7zip'd msi and the windows compressed cab file. It seems that WiX puts files into the cabinet sorted by their 'Id' strings. Since some of the files are very similar or even identical (32-bit vs 64-bit headers), it helps a lot if these files appear one after the other in the cabinet file. I've switched my Id='xxx' strings to use the format Id='file.reversed-filename.path-hash'. For example, the file bin/gcc.exe gets called 'file.exe.ccg.12345667890ABCDEF' (with a real hash). Since I am generating these fragments of my WiX xml automagically, this switch was no problem. This reduced the compressed msi from 77MB to 59MB by better exposing the locality to the compressor. The 7zip size went from 36MB to 27.5MB (nearly as small as the raw files compressed completely by 7zip itself!). I imagine these savings would probably also apply to other projects. Clumping all the C headers together likewise makes compression dictionaries far more effective. Ditto for Standard ML signature and source files. Actually, just sorting files by their size would probably get much of the same locality benefits. It's really quite stupid of WiX to sort by the user-specified 'Id'. I doubt many WiX users realize how relevant the Id choice is to the final installer size. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
