You may be able to craft a Custom Action that would replicate the pattern of the PatchFiles standard action in some fashion but building all the parts to make it work would not be trivial, and you are limited to Vista and above (MSDelta won't be supported on XP or Server 2003).
I don't see a clear way to graft this in given the architecture of Windows Installer. It really would need to be done "right". However, if someone is willing to fund it (or to gather several who would then jointly fund it), one could be obliged to spend less time at his current gig and devote some time to this (they arent using all 40 hours available to them right now anyway). If that someone were to then want to gift that solution back to WiX I'm sure the team would consider the contribution, but that would not be required to get the solution into your system. -----Original Message----- From: Darren Grant [mailto:therealklu...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, December 03, 2009 12:15 AM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Delta patching a very large binary file. Is it advisable to call out to a command line action to solve this problem until there is a native wix solution? Cheers, Darren On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 11:39 PM, Blair <os...@live.com> wrote: > The older technology (the one used by Windows Installer) is called PatchAPI > (patchapi.h) and the newer one (not used by Windows Installer) is called > MSDelta (msdelta.h) > > Both are described in this paper: > http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/bb417345.aspx. You can see the clear > advantages of MSDelta over PatchAPI, but I don't see a clear path for > Windows Installer to transition. > > PatchAPI may have a bit more detail in this older paper: > http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/ms811406.aspx but I doubt it. The newer > paper pretty much simply adds to the older one. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Darren Grant [mailto:therealklu...@gmail.com] > Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 11:24 AM > To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. > Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Delta patching a very large binary file. > > OK I determined the files are PE. The state of MS delta tech > integration is really useful to know. Can you reveal the name of the > new delta tech for keeping tabs? > > It seems that a third-party option will be required at this time. > > Thank you for your insights! > > --Darren > > > On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Blair <os...@live.com> wrote: >> PE/PE+ question is referring to the files you are trying to ship the > deltas >> of (your huge files). >> >> PE is the 32-bit binary file format Microsoft uses for .exe, .dll, etc. >> files. It is also the file format used for most .NET files. PE+ is the >> 64-bit binary file format Microsoft uses for the same file types. >> >> mspatch[c/a] are "optimized" for 32-bit binary files and are alleged to > not >> be as efficient with 64-bit files. Microsoft has a newer "delta"-style >> technology/API that they want everyone to use instead of mspatch[c/a], but >> Windows Installer (for legacy reasons) is stuck using the older >> technology/API. >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Darren Grant [mailto:therealklu...@gmail.com] >> Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 10:44 PM >> To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. >> Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Delta patching a very large binary file. >> >> Hi Blair, >> >> I did not supply mspatchc with the pdb, but I will try this as well as >> the dll's from a few other SDK versions. >> >> By PE/+ are you referring to the mspatch tools? These were 32-bit. >> >> >> Thank you, >> Darren >> >> >> >> >> On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 6:46 PM, Blair <os...@live.com> wrote: >>> One additional question: are the binary files PE or PE+? > mspatchc/mspatcha >>> are documented to work better with 32-bit (PE) than 64-bit (PE+) files. >>> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: Blair [mailto:os...@live.com] >>> Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 6:43 PM >>> To: 'General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.' >>> Subject: RE: [WiX-users] Delta patching a very large binary file. >>> >>> Were you able to supply mspatchc with the symbols file (*.pdb) for the >>> binary? It is documented to be able to better compress files when the PDB >> is >>> supplied. I don't know what definition of better they mean, but you could >>> try it both ways (with and without the PDBs). >>> >>> Unfortunately Windows Installer uses mspatcha to apply the delta to the >>> file(s), and that doesn't appear to be overridable. If you can find a >>> replacement for mspatchc that doesn't fail with the large files that >>> produces output compatible with mspatcha (assuming mspatcha can deal with >>> files that big), I can help you with the binder extension you would need >> to >>> build your delta patches. >>> >>> Also mspatchc/mspatcha come from Windows (mspatchc in the SDK and > mspatcha >>> in Windows itself). You could try changing the mspatchc/mspatcha versions >> to >>> see if the windows build/sdk they come from make any difference. >>> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: Darren Grant [mailto:therealklu...@gmail.com] >>> Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 1:25 PM >>> To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net >>> Subject: [WiX-users] Delta patching a very large binary file. >>> >>> Hi, >>> >>> I am new to WiX and MSI programming in general, coming from an >>> imperative NSIS background where I used vpatch to apply delta patches >>> to large (> 500-MB) binary files. >>> >>> Deferring to the experts out there, how do you achieve this with WiX? >>> :) Unfortunately the files are too large for mspatchc and it just >>> creates a replacement instead of a delta after almost a couple hours >>> of processing. >>> >>> >>> Thank you! >>> >>> --Darren >>> >>> >> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> -- >>> Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 >> 30-Day >>> trial. 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Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus > on >> what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with >> Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july >> _______________________________________________ >> WiX-users mailing list >> WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users >> > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > -- > Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day > trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus > on > what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with > Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july > _______________________________________________ > WiX-users mailing list > WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- > Join us December 9, 2009 for the Red Hat Virtual Experience, > a free event focused on virtualization and cloud computing. > Attend in-depth sessions from your desk. Your couch. Anywhere. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/redhat-sfdev2dev > _______________________________________________ > WiX-users mailing list > WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Join us December 9, 2009 for the Red Hat Virtual Experience, a free event focused on virtualization and cloud computing. Attend in-depth sessions from your desk. Your couch. 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