Feature request: Windows ZIP Distribution

[Sigbjorn Finne]

That's an impressive reduction in size; compressing the
CAB file inside the MSI using the LZW-based compressor
that Microsoft provides with their 'makecab' utility didn't
make much of a difference in size (but increased compression
time quite a bit.) I'm idly speculating that LZMA's larger dictionaries
is what's paying off here. Thanks for the pointer, I'll definitely
play with it.

I'm not planning on switching to 7-Zip in the near future though.
However, I think Brian Smith's suggestion of offering up a
.zip'ed up version of the GHC distribution tree is a good
one & plan to do that for the next release. It can then be used
to derive other distribution/installer formats.

--sigbjorn

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bulat Ziganshin" <bulatz at HotPOP.com>
To: "Sigbjorn Finne" <sof at galois.com>
Cc: <glasgow-haskell-bugs at haskell.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2005 23:09
Subject: Re[2]: Feature request: Windows ZIP Distribution


> Hello Sigbjorn,
>
> Wednesday, May 18, 2005, 8:38:55 PM, you wrote:
>
> SF> The 6.4 installer has a UI bug that may prevent you from using
> SF> it on a box where you don't have admin privs. Try starting up the 
> installer,
> SF> hit Next, followed by Back. That should bring up a dialog letting you 
> choose
> SF> whether to perform a user or machine wide installation. Select the 
> former
>
> nice bug! :)
>
> you can cut installer size in 1.5-2 times by repacking it with another
> compressor - LZMA. i tried this on the your 6.4 distribution and whole
> installed directory was packed down to 26 megs
>
> to get this work you can either switch to Nullsoft installer, which
> has support for LZMA, or create self-extracting module with help of
> 7-zip (www.7-zip.org) anf include this self-extractor in your installer
>
> in order to test lzma compression, download abovementioned 7-zip and
> try it on some directory with the following cmdline:
>
> 7z a archive -r -mx9
>
> -- 
> Best regards,
> Bulat                            mailto:bulatz at HotPOP.com
>
>