Reducing the size of Plug-in MSI created using Wix.

[Migration User]

Hi All,

Recently we have migrated one of our Plug-ins (Inventory Agent) installer from Wise to Wix. After migration we have observed that the size of MSI is increased by 3 MB as compared with Wise installer.
The increase in size is due to addition of extra UI images in the installer, images like  ("top16.bmp","side16.bmp")  are getting included from one of the files named  "AimSolutionUI64.wxi"  from SSDK (Altiris SDK).
To reduce  the size of plug-in MSI we are thinking to replace these images with a blank image of size 1kb only, it will not affect any user as they will install these plug-in agents silently.

Please let us know if our approach is correct or not.

Thanks.
Sanghpal.

[Migration User]

That is a nice find by you.  We will need to have a look at the images at (C:\Program Files\Altiris\Altiris SDK\Altiris Developer 2.0\Resources\Bitmaps) to correct the issue.

These images will not be seen unless the user has manually ran the MSI in UI mode.  This is something we have prevented the user from doing as they will install via SIM.  It should be safe to replace these images to reduce the MSI file size.

[Migration User]

Sanghpal,

there two ways to solve the issue:

1. there is an another set of so called 'small' resources what should be used instead of standard, these resources are not in ASDK yet, so they  should be copied to ASDK folder manually.  Then you can use these resources from WIX source files. E.g. instead of using AimSolutionUI64.wxi use AimSolutionUI64_small.wxi. For inventory projects I've created p4 folder where from these 'small' resources can be taken (untill they will be included into ASDK). The folder is: //depot/Endpoint_Management_Group/notification_server/solutions/Inventory/InventoryBuildSystem/AltirisSDK_small'

2. Another way is to exclude UI from setup packages at all (we use this approach on Inventory ULM, Inventory Pack for Servers ULM, Invnentory for Network Devices and I know some other solutions use same approach). In this case you have just to exclude AimSolutionUI64.wxi file from your WIX projects;

I think we (inventory and inventory ULM) should use same approach as we work on same solution, I'd recommend qway #2. If you have any questions please contact me directly by email: [e-mail]

[Migration User]

Thanks All for your help on this.

Dmitri,

Yes, we have implemented #2 approach suggested by you.

Sanghpal.