Hey Tom, I, personally, do not condone using the ZIP method. I actually don't see how it would be much faster to manage a ZIP file. Pretty much that is what MSI is doing for you now. You can change the compression ratios of the CAB files you put your product if you need to gain compression speed.
The age old problem of writing custom actions is 1) development and debuging is difficult and 2) handling all transactions (install, modify, repair, rollback, patch and uninstall) can also add overhead. For files, MSI can handle your needs. I do see that you will run into some of the size issues using heat even with the new modifications. If you are able to break your files up into say 1000 file directories that remain fairly stable (patching is difficult either way you go) you would just need to run heat 24 times in your build process to harvest those files. As mentioned in my blog that Yan pointed you to, there are some extensions planned for heat which are slated to help out in this. Hope that helps, Brian Rogers "Intelligence removes complexity." - Me http://icumove.spaces.live.com On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 7:56 AM, Yan Sklyarenko <y...@sitecore.net> wrote: > First off, heat was recently enhanced to support automation better: > http://icumove.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!FB93073C6534B681!461.entry > > In terms of installation performance, the second option is better, IMHO. > For instance, if you have thousands of icons, which are not the subject > to upgrade regularly, then you can zip them and have a custom action to > maintain that ZIP. For instance, you can extract it in the background > during the installation, remove on uninstall, etc. If you need to > upgrade those files, you'll have to overwrite the entire set, which is > quite acceptable for icons. It means less control from Windows > Installer, more responsibility to developer, but reduces the time of > install/uninstall. > > This is not the "MSI recommended" way, of course, but in some situations > it overweighs the potential problems of violating the rules :) Again, > this is my own opinion. > > Hope this helps. > > -- Yan > > -----Original Message----- > From: Tom Crozier [mailto:tcroz...@rackwise.com] > Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 4:25 PM > To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net > Subject: [WiX-users] How to handle installing a large number of files > > All - I need to know the best way to handle installing a large number of > files. As part of the project I have 2 different directories with > approximately 24,000 files (including subfolders) in each. I could use > heat to generate the initial list but then I am assuming I have to > maintain the list from then on since I would not want the file id's > changing from release to release. The other method would be to zip up > each directory and install the zip file. In this case I would need to > write a custom action to unzip the files (unless there is already > something available). Ideas? Suggestions? > > Thanks - TopCat > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > ------ > _______________________________________________ > WiX-users mailing list > WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > _______________________________________________ > WiX-users mailing list > WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
