3 replies to this topic

[joephayes]

Hi all,

Ran across something unusual and wanted to know if anyone else had run into it.

Say I have a Basic MSI project. In it I have several features each of which contain a merge module and no components. In addition, the merge modules may be dependent on each other. The setup looks like this:

FEATURE1: MM1
FEATURE2: MM2 (dependent on MM1)
FEATURE3: MM3 (dependent on MM2)

When I build a release and select one cab per feature compression, I get 1 cab file:
FEATURE3.CAB. I'm assuming I do not get a FEATURE1.CAB and FEATURE2.CAB because MM1 and MM2 are streamed into FEATURE3.CAB because of the module dependencies (I've verified that MM1 and MM2 are in FEATURE3.CAB with ORCA). While I'm not thrilled with having one big cab, it does not seem to adversely affect the install in anyway. I'm really trying to understand the rules here.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

J

[luke_s]

I just did a ran a few tests on my setup (10+features) and mine also combines features together.

I think this must be how InstallShield handles dependancies when you specify seperate cabs.

This is a pain in your case because if the user only wants Feature1 then they still have to download feature 2 and 3 as well.

Has anyone else experienced this behaviour before?

[hteichert]

When I began to cab our setups, I had the same problem (OK, I'm still using ISWI 1.52, but this problem isn't resolved yet). I still don't understand why Installshield uses Features as a base for the cabbing - and not Components.
Different Features may depend on the same Component, so it would be possible to reuse a CAB-file containing one or more related Components during the installation of different Features.
For me the only way out of this was to build an own mechanism to cab a setup based on components. I'm always building uncompressed setups and let these setups be reworked by a VBscript using Windows Installer's Automation abilities and Microsoft's "MakeCab.exe".
As a side effect there's a second advantage of building the setups uncompressed at first: You need them to build patches.

[joephayes]

For now, I will deal with the situation (especially since I now understand what is happening). Eventually, I will either use "cab per component" or go the home-grown route.

Thanks for the replies!

J