In trying to determine why our setup is so bloated I created several dummy IS projects, each containing only a single 30k file. These projects did not include the windows installer or any redistributables, and did not include dependencies of the added file. Here are the setup.exe sizes from each:
- A dummy InstallScript project is 1.5 MB - A dummy InstallScript MSI project is 3.5 MB - A dummy Basic MSI project is 1.6 MB
When the Windows Installer is included - - A dummy Basic MSI is 4.1 MB - A dummy InstallScript MSI is 5.9 MB
I understand that the Windows Installer will bloat the setup.exe size, but why is the setup.exe from the basic projects so large? What can I do to reduce it?
For basic MSI there needs to be included setup.exe wrapper which takes some cost. There is also auto dependency scan which you should always check if it adds what you really need(File view, dependencies from scan at build). And the other reason i guess it have much nicer UI than other MSIs and it takes some cost. To reduce your setup size, you can also enable zip or lze compression.
