How to merge Setup packages

Question

I am working on a Setup project that produces a rather large .msi file because of a high number of dependencies. I currently need to send updates for this to my remote client, a rather taxing process because of my slow adsl connection.

What can I do to enable me to only send eg an updated database file or an updated .exe file, and let my client merge these into the core setup package? I know there is such an animal as a merge module , but I don't know if they are right for this particular task. Using a standard VS project my only option seems to be to not package files into the .msi or .cab files, so he can keep a core package and I send individual files for him to replace in the core package. I maybe could improve the package size by manually compressing files and uncompressing with a custom action before executing the main installation.

How should I go about this?

Answer 1

You should check out Windows installer Patches. They aren't easy, but they do exactly what you want. They include only the diffs of your changes(including only the binary diffs) so they are usually much smaller.