In any given build, most of the time is typically taken doing three things: moving files, building cabs, and embedding.
For the scenario you describe, I would recommend each MSI end up with (at least) three cabs (1. the 70 MB "common" cab, 2. the 50 MB "locale" cab, and 3. the 3MB "platform" cab). Make sure you are using the "cab reuse" feature of light (on by default in more recent builds). Making non-bound wixlibs may (or may not) help light's cab reuse algorithm (it's been some time since I looked at it) but it could certainly help organize your build activity, so I would recommend looking at it for its code organizational aspects. Making merge modules will likely slow down your builds, since they have to embed the files, then extract them and (possibly) embed them again. You may see a speed increase by getting rid of your locale merge modules (especially if you do NOT make them "binary/bound"). The typical projects I work on tend to take between 15 and 65 minutes to link, and at most 1 minute of that is spent processing the XML, generating/populating/importing the tables, and other related tasks. All the rest is spent copying file content around. -Blair -----Original Message----- From: Brian Gillespie [mailto:br...@mcneel.com] Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 12:10 PM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: [WiX-users] Do WiX 3.0 link times improve using .wixlib files? Hi, I have a project that builds 88 different flavors - the cross product of these three variables: Platform: x86 | x64 Configuration: Beta | Retail | Evaluation | Another Evaluation Locale: cs, en-us, es-es, de-de, fr-fr, it-it, ja, ko, pl, zh-cn, zh-tw A core exe (3MB) changes with both Platform and Configuration, and locale-related stuff changes with each local (50MB). The rest of the content of each installer is identical (70MB). A merge module is built for each locale. A big wix project then is built to make each flavor. It takes 3-5 minutes each. Would moving the shared contents from the core installer to a .wixlib or merge module make any difference in link times? It will take some effort to rearrange the code, and I don't want to bother if it will make no difference in the final build times. Do you have any things I should watch out for that could adversely affect performance? Thanks in advance, - Brian Brian Gillespie Rhinoceros Development Robert McNeel & Associates ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Download new Adobe(R) Flash(R) Builder(TM) 4 The new Adobe(R) Flex(R) 4 and Flash(R) Builder(TM) 4 (formerly Flex(R) Builder(TM)) enable the development of rich applications that run across multiple browsers and platforms. Download your free trials today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-dev2dev _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download new Adobe(R) Flash(R) Builder(TM) 4 The new Adobe(R) Flex(R) 4 and Flash(R) Builder(TM) 4 (formerly Flex(R) Builder(TM)) enable the development of rich applications that run across multiple browsers and platforms. Download your free trials today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-dev2dev _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
