The way you worded your question it appeared that you were asking if you could simply compress a .cab using 7-zip's LZMA compression algorithm & I may be too used to people on this list expecting the minimum amount of effort to solve anything remotely difficult (and subsequently blaming a lack of Windows Installer familiarity on non-existent shortcomings in WiX but lets not get started on that). However 2 hours of time coding & testing compared to the 20 seconds it takes to write <Media Id="1" Cabinet="mycab.cab" EmbedCab="yes" CompressionLevel="high" /> ? Could be worth feature requesting for something like Burn but taking modern internet connections into consideration I don't see many people being that bothered about it if they have to put that amount of effort in to make it work.
FYI I just checked our installation archive sizes. Raw data = 193 MB (202,991,281 bytes) MSI with embedded Cab using "high" compression = 55.7 MB (58,464,768 bytes) 7z archive = 42 MB (44,049,930 bytes) For the raw data & 7z archive I used the administrative install I use for creating a minor update patch. MSI is generated with WiX v3.0.5419.0. 7z archive is default "ultra" compression level settings in 7-zip v4.65. It greatly depends on what your application is installing to the user's machine on how big a difference you will see in the compression. If you're taking 320 MB & compressing it to 35 MB I'm going to guess that the majority of your files aren't binaries or of similar complexity but are 'data' such as XML, images etc. Palbinder Sandher Software Deployment & IT Administrator T: +44 (0) 141 945 8500 F: +44 (0) 141 945 8501 http://www.iesve.com **Design, Simulate + Innovate with the <Virtual Environment>** Integrated Environmental Solutions Limited. Registered in Scotland No. SC151456 Registered Office - Helix Building, West Of Scotland Science Park, Glasgow G20 0SP Email Disclaimer -----Original Message----- From: Wesley W. Terpstra [mailto:wes...@terpstra.ca] Sent: 02 November 2009 16:31 To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: Re: [WiX-users] LZMA compression? On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 3:30 PM, Pally Sandher <pally.sand...@iesve.com> wrote: > Try using "mszip" instead of "high" for compression on your media tag > & see if that changes the size of the cab file. It does. It becomes 99MB, i.e. bigger. > If you want your > files be installed without any extra work you're going to have to use > the CAB format. I thought it understood that I was willing to put in some work. :) > My suggestion would be to build your MSI with the files "uncompressed" > then compress them yourself using 7zip or whatever. You can then use a > bootstrapper to uncompress your files before running the MSI to > install it. Seems like a hell of a lot of work though for not a huge > payoff & there are probably better ways to achieve the result, that > was just off the top of my head. Yes, I'd tried this already this morning. I ended up with a 35MB installer when using a self-extracting 7zip archive of the uncompressed msi. The down-side is that it dumps the uncompressed msi into the users temporary folder before the installation begins, doubling the free space required to perform an install. For such a big savings in download-time I think that's a reasonable trade-off. It was at most 2 hours of fiddling, so not that much work. Of course 35MB still isn't 27MB, but it's enough better than 77MB that I'm happy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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 WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
