Compression

[jepwga]

I have been given the job of changing the installs from installscript to basic MSI and the size for the larger files have grown by as much as 3 times the former size. I have compression set to on but that only puts the files in a single MSI. Any help on what I am missing would be greatly appreciated.

[Fred_Oisund]

Could this be because you bundle Windows Installer Service setup with you new setups? I think it is by default...

[SherylSikora]

You can also try using the "Optimize Size" setting on the release.

[jepwga]

Thanks for the help. I did not have the optimize setting turned on. That reduced the size by about 15%, which helps.
The windows services part may not be on by default in a basic MSI package.
The install is still very big (53 meg). There must be a lot of overhead in MSI installation projects.
Thanks again.

[SherylSikora]

A few things that will increase size in a compressed msi:

1. If you have merge modules or setup prerequisites included in your project
2. Installing the MSI redistributables in your release and having them set to extract from setup.exe
3. Including any .NET or J# redists in your release