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Does anybody know why a package is so BIG(as in MB) when you run the Package and Deployment Wizard. this is frusturating when my little pittly program turns out to be huge in size? Does anyone have any suggestions???????????????? Your help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
I can tell you exactly why its so big when you run the Package and Deployment Wizard.
"The Deployment Wizard Sucks"
To put it into more technical terms the Deployment Wizard assumes that the machine you are going to install the application on has absolutely NOTHING on it and so when it creates your setup file it puts inside it every single DLL, OCX and EXE that is required to make your application work.
If you want to cut it down what I suggest you do is this :
1. Run the Wizard but get a Dependancy File only.
2. Go to a machine that has a CLEAN installation of Windows on it and MAKE SURE THERE IS NO VB ON THAT MACHINE
3. Do a File Search for each of the files listed in the .DEP file you created in step 1.
4. For each file you find on the basic machine cross it off your list on the .DEP report
5. Run the Wizard again but this time when you come to the list of files it will include remove all those you found on the base machine.
This will reduce the size of your file but don't expect it to come down to anything under 1.4MB as most base Windows machine don't have the MSVB50VM.DLL (VB5) or MSVB60VM.DLL (VB6) runtime files installed on them and they are both > 2MB in size uncompressed.
Yes the P&D wizard sucks, but then, any setup that does not contain all files that might be needed sucks even more.
If you use another setup package, you still get a huge setup, simply because the VB runtime is huge.
Best you can do is grap the vb6 runtime dll setup from the M$ site, or create 2 setups, 1 which includes the runtime, and one that only contains your app and dll's and ocx's your app uses.
But again, the runtime dll's itself are at least 1 mb (I believe the runtime setup M$ provides is 1.2Mb).
If you can;t live with that, switch to a language which gives you the option to use runtime dll's or not (C++, Delphi).
So make your choice, provide a setup of which you are sure your user can run the program, or provide an incomplete setup and let your user be frustrated it runs a setup btu can't run the program...
Read my Reply to the question of distributing files.