Software Deployment

ORIGINAL: DanielHochman
I'm pretty new to package development, so excuse my ignorance.
I'm having an Adobe Reader install run after I run an InstallShield of my program. I created a customized Acrobat install using the Adobe Customization Wizard 8. The .exe that Acrobat distributes is about 23mb, but the custom .msi with the .cab file and other files of the customized install is over 90mb (it was that big even before customization). Is there a way to re-compress those files to get back to around 20-30mb. I need to keep my disc under 650mb and my .msi is about 620mb without Reader.



Daniel, the cabs should already be pretty well compressed. You could use Winzip to zip them up even more.
There may be extraneous stuff leftover you can delete.

I am not clear on why 90MB is an issue on a 620 MB disk though. ??

Thanks for your response aogilmor.
The CAB file is not compressed for some reason. The origional Adobe Reader EXE file that you download from adobe.com is 22mb. This custom MSI with CAB is 90mb for some strange reason. When I extract the CAB and then repackage it compressed it's alot smaller, but the install gives an error.

I found this program called PackSetup 2 (http://www.wischik.com/lu/programmer/packsetup2.html) which takes the msi, cab, and exe bootstrapper and makes a self-extracting exe file which runs the installation. It makes an exe which is about 40mb and installs great except it gives an error message like "can't run setup.exe" even though it installs fine.
Do you know of any other free programs that can take an MSI and CAB and make a compressed self-extracting installer?

To clarify the space issue. My MSI for MY program is 620mb and the CD production house will only accept discs under 650mb and I need to include a customized Adobe Reader MSI as well.

Thanks,
Daniel

Without wishing to appear flippant, can the production house not handle DVDs? Practically every PC and server supplied in the last 10 years will have had a DVD-ROM as opposed to CD-ROM.

I could do that, but its more expensive and i'm afraid people might put it into their CD-ROM Drives...and why do it when I'm so close to CD size?

I could do that, but its more expensive and i'm afraid people might put it into their CD-ROM Drives...and why do it when I'm so close to CD size?The next logical question then is, how do you propose to handle the next release of AR which, if past performance is anything to go by, will be larger than the last? At some point, you're going to hit the limit and will need to bite this particular bullet.

To clarify the space issue. My MSI for MY program is 620mb and the CD production house will only accept discs under 650mb and I need to include a customized Adobe Reader MSI as well.

Just a question here, if I may ..

The MSI for your program is 620 MB ? That's a fair sized package. if you don't mind me saying - any chance this could be reduced in size instead ? As VBScab rightly points out, Adobe could (and probably will) increase the size of their reader package with the next release - something you will have no control over (unless you have friends in high places at Adobe [:)])

With your own package, you at least (potentially) have the opportunity to control the size. For example, are there any multilingual files in the package that will never be used (or very unlikely to be used) in the target estate ? - if so, you might make a saving by stripping these from the package.

Just out of interest, is your MSI file alone 620MB, or is this the combined size of your MSI and your CAB ? If your MSI contains an embedded CAB then you might want to try a tool such as unfrag on the MSI file itself to reduce it's size.

(unfrag can be found at http://solidworks.cad.de/download/unfrag.zip )

Regards,

Spartacus

Thanks so much for all your suggestions. Since this is my first time making a program/install I'll give you a brief overview of what I'm trying to do.

1- My install consists soley of 54 large PDF files that have been optimized/compressed to 638mb.
2- I'm using InstallShield 12 to make the installer
3- The only thing I need the installer to do besides copying over the PDFs is to launch the Adobe Reader Setup automatically after. I read that I can do this with a custom action. I can't use the 22mb Adobe Reader Install that Adobe distributes because I need to customize some reg keys (for toolbar displays), supress some pop-ups, updaters etc.. so therefore I used the Adobe Customization Wizard to Create an MSI, CAB, and EXE (bootstrapper- which I have no idea what it does).

But this puts me over 650mb.

I tried the different package options in InstallShield and the smallest one ended up being a single MSI at 620mb. Is there a better (more compact) way to package my installer in installshield? Or, can anyone suggest a way to get the 90mb customized Adobe Reader install back to 22mb?

Thanks so much,
Daniel

How do the PDFs compress with another technology e.g. ZIP, PKArc, whatever? If you get better compression, your package could simply copy and uncompress them.

I'm adding the files to the InstallShield project raw (meaning not in a zip folder or anything like that). If I were to zip them, how can I tell InstallShield to unzip them?

If I were to zip them, how can I tell InstallShield to unzip them?You'd need a Custom Action with a call to an unzip program. There's ZIP functionality built-in to XP, of course so you could in theory use a DLL function call. IIRC, the SHELL32.DLL contains the ZIP/UNZIP functions.