While available bandwidth and hard drive space are
constantly on the rise, so are our requirements - the
software we author keeps growing larger and larger.
This is even more true when we take into consideration
the size of runtime components that our software often
depends on - from DirectX in games to MDAC in database
applications, each runtime component increases program
size, and this invariably reflects in the product downloadable.
InstallAware works very hard to create
the smallest possible packages for your setups:
- Any compressed files going into your setup are first
decompressed using the InstallAware
Decompressor.
This includes any merge modules, runtime files, and
so on. This decompression step is required because
pre-compressed data, no matter how badly it was originally
compressed, can never be recompressed with a superior
algorithm.
- The files that comprise your setup itself are processed
without any compression until the final step of building
your package. InstallAware builds
your setup files, adds its own runtime, and prepares
the final setup package.
- All your application runtimes, merge modules, your
application itself, and the InstallAware
runtime are then compressed in a single pass using
a special algorithm that is optimized for compressing
program files. You now have a tightly compressed setup
package, with no artificial compression limitations.
InstallAware's unique compressor provides
the best rates in the compression industry, outperforming
all traditional archive management and setup creation
programs:
- InstallAware provides a ground-breaking data
crunching algorithm to make sure setups are as small
as possible.
- The advanced LZMA encoder used in InstallAware
uses technologically superior methods of eliminating
redundancies across multiple files.
- InstallAware
is even equipped with BCJ2 filters that
pre-process your executables and increase their compressibility.
Below is a simple chart that compares the
size of several runtime components with and without InstallAware
compression:
| redistributable |
regular |
InstallAware |
size gains |
| Windows Installer 2.0 |
3,446 KB |
1,770 KB |
49% |
| Internet Explorer 6 |
79,849 KB |
47,110 KB |
41% |
| Microsoft .NET 1.1 |
23,697 KB |
12,338 KB |
48% |
| Microsoft .NET 1.1 with Service Pack
1 |
34,150 KB |
11,403 KB |
67% |
Microsoft JSharp 1.1 |
6,764 KB |
2,596 KB |
61% |
| Microsoft .NET 2.0 |
22,959 KB |
17,272 KB |
25% |
| Microsoft .NET 3.5 (including .NET 2.0 SP1 and .NET 3.0 SP1) |
201,848 KB |
131,438 KB |
35% |
| Microsoft SQL Server Express 2005 |
54,791 KB |
33,036 KB |
40% |
|
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