Re[2]: Feature request: Windows ZIP Distribution

Hello Sigbjorn,

Thursday, May 19, 2005, 9:18:56 PM, you wrote:

SF> That's an impressive reduction in size; compressing the
SF> CAB file inside the MSI using the LZW-based compressor
SF> that Microsoft provides with their 'makecab' utility didn't

LZX (very different from LZW, born long ago, in 1984)

btw, while writing this letter i compressed GHC 6.4 installation with
cabarc. it results in 33 megs only (!). may be when you creating your
installation, you are using MSZIP compression instead of LZX? or you
compress with LZX:15, i.e. with minimal 32 kb dictionary instead of
LZX:21?

SF> make much of a difference in size (but increased compression
SF> time quite a bit.) I'm idly speculating that LZMA's larger dictionaries
SF> is what's paying off here.

the difference is also in format of compressed data. in particular,
lzma use arithmetic instead of huffman compression to futher compress
data

SF> I'm not planning on switching to 7-Zip in the near future though.

you are not understood me. with help of 7-zip you can create EXE-file,
which will self-extract all the compressed files when runned (it's
much like to that any installer does). so you can either:

1) use microsoft installer but include just one self-extracting EXE
file in it. so in beginning of installation this EXE must be runned,
it will create all the dustributed files and then normal installation
procedure will arrange all other tasks

2) use Nullsoft installer which can compress files with LZMA. of
course, in this scenario ypu will need to rewrite all installation
scripts/configs to deal with new installer-creation software

3) you can also use 7-zip's own installation-creating facility, which
is based on it's SFX. afaik, this installer just extracts all files in
archive and then runs program you specified, so in this case you must
arrange all installation tasks by hand-made program

SF> However, I think Brian Smith's suggestion of offering up a
SF> .zip'ed up version of the GHC distribution tree is a good
SF> one & plan to do that for the next release. It can then be used
SF> to derive other distribution/installer formats.

i think that other distributions can easily be created by just
installing current one and then compressing ghc-6.4 directory with
appropriate archiver. or i am wrong?

in any case, if you can provide lzma-based distribution in any form
(some installer or just .7z archive) i will bw very grateful. my
bandwidth is 56K only :(

btw, if you are interested in playing with lzma and other modern
compression algorithms included in your own program, you can download
Compression'2005 library from http://freearc.narod.ru


-- 
Best regards,
 Bulat                            mailto:bulatz@xxxxxxxxxx