Software Deployment

Hope you feel better now.

Copy and paste the file table into Excel and work on your filename column there... Excel has 65536 rows - just enough for you ;-)

In its defence - Wise may not be brilliant at everything but it deals with most things pretty well and 65000 files is excessive... [8|]

Cheers,
Rob.

I would love to do it in Excel, but if I try to copy or past the whole filetable, wise just stops responding. I've let it run for the night (about 17 hours) but it still was unresponsive, so I can't do that [:(]

Ughhh sorry to hear that.

What if you try and copy the table out in sections instead? Maybe 65000 in one hit is crippling the machine. Shame you can't open it in Orca I'm sure you'd have more luck... if only you could get it into an MSI haha (sorry).

I guess by this stage you've tried but how about find and replace?

ORIGINAL: MSIPackager

I guess by this stage you've tried but how about find and replace?



That's what I'm doing wright now, but there are a lot of differences and the short file names must be unique in the same folder. Fortunitely there are enough files that can be done by using F&R. [:)]

For that many Image files I would consider using an alternative way of copying them onto the target machine using a custom action.

For example, have the bulk load of files in a subdirectory of your MSI source directory and launch a custom action that performs a robocopy of the files from the source subdirectory into the target folder. You could even set up your robocopy to mirror the files during a repair so that you keep a kind of quasi self heal functionality there. Add another cleanup custom action to uninstall the files.

Or zip the whole bunch into OBZ (One Big ZIP) install that with, then do a custom action that will perform a command line unzip on the destination machine to the target directory. Again you could set up your custom action to re-run during repair. Add another cleanup custom action to uninstall the files.

Another alternative is to keep the files on a file server and point your app to look there for them, keeping them off of the workstation entirely and ultimatly saving disk space because all of the users would look to the same share to retrieve the files. (of course the app needs to be able to support that - and you may need a mapped drive - and it won't work for disconnected or remote users)

I'm sure others could add to the list of alternatives.

i think robocopy is the best way....its the good old dos way

Congratulations you have found a wise bug! Now get in the queue to claim your prize.

You can use Orca on wsi files btw. However being able to paste rows from excel, I'm going to have a look at that.

You could try writing a macro in wise. It may not work because their addfile function will probably give you the same response. Maybe use the addfile function then modify the file table and wisesourcefile table entries. Yeah that could work...

hahaha... sorry to laugh at your misery. But if you don't laugh you'll cry. [&:]

ORIGINAL: BobTheBuilder

For that many Image files I would consider using an alternative way of copying them onto the target machine using a custom action.

For example, have the bulk load of files in a subdirectory of your MSI source directory and launch a custom action that performs a robocopy of the files from the source subdirectory into the target folder. You could even set up your robocopy to mirror the files during a repair so that you keep a kind of quasi self heal functionality there. Add another cleanup custom action to uninstall the files.

Or zip the whole bunch into OBZ (One Big ZIP) install that with, then do a custom action that will perform a command line unzip on the destination machine to the target directory. Again you could set up your custom action to re-run during repair. Add another cleanup custom action to uninstall the files.

Another alternative is to keep the files on a file server and point your app to look there for them, keeping them off of the workstation entirely and ultimatly saving disk space because all of the users would look to the same share to retrieve the files. (of course the app needs to be able to support that - and you may need a mapped drive - and it won't work for disconnected or remote users)

I'm sure others could add to the list of alternatives.


These are all very good alternatives indeed, and I've thought of them, but company rules state that all files must be in the MSI [:@].


Congratulations you have found a wise bug! Now get in the queue to claim your prize.


Well, we're currently working with wise 4.6 and where planning to upgrade to 5.6, so I'm hoping that this will solve this bug.
And if not, it is not every day that you've got to package a application like this [:)]

Hey mkrijt - how's it going? Got your package sorted yet?!

I've just landed myself an install with over 41000 files (must be something in the air) - I thought you need to edit the shema database to allow installs over 32767 files so followed MS guidelines here.

But the column types in the File, Media and Patch tables are already set to i4 - same as dm1's experience here. He got away with not needing to do it in the end but you must have got around the limitation to get to 65000 files, can you tell me how you did it?

Or anyone else out there have a definitive guide to cracking massive apps?

Currenly looking at splitting the package into two but I'm not really happy with it...

Thanks,
Rob.

ORIGINAL: MSIPackager

Hey mkrijt - how's it going? Got your package sorted yet?!

I've just landed myself an install with over 41000 files (must be something in the air) - I thought you need to edit the shema database to allow installs over 32767 files so followed MS guidelines here.

But the column types in the File, Media and Patch tables are already set to i4 - same as dm1's experience here. He got away with not needing to do it in the end but you must have got around the limitation to get to 65000 files, can you tell me how you did it?

Or anyone else out there have a definitive guide to cracking massive apps?

Currenly looking at splitting the package into two but I'm not really happy with it...

Thanks,
Rob.


When you look at the shema for the filetabel, the last two values are i/I-values? I've set them both to I4/i4. When I did this it worked fine.

Could you post the shema for the filetable?

Sure - here you go:

File Component_ FileName FileSize Version Language Attributes Sequence
s72 s72 l255 i4 S72 S20 I2 i4
File File

The formatting is a bit screwed - but it's i4 (lowercase i) in all 3 tables... Are you saying just change them to uppercase?

ILIKEBANANAS - thanks for the suggestion but I don't think putting it into excel via msidb will make any difference...

ORIGINAL: MSIPackager

Sure - here you go:

File Component_ FileName FileSize Version Language Attributes Sequence
s72 s72 l255 i4 S72 S20 I2 i4
File File

The formatting is a bit screwed - but it's i4 (lowercase i) in all 3 tables... Are you saying just change them to uppercase?

ILIKEBANANAS - thanks for the suggestion but I don't think putting it into excel via msidb will make any difference...



Hmm......I changed both the I2 and the i2 to I4 and i4 (I don't know if it matters if you use I/i).

Are you changing the right template?

Surely i2 relates the the attributes column though - this won't affect the maximum no of files allowed in the MSI and presumably changing this could cause problems elsewhere...

Not sure what you mean by the right template? The package is based on the Wise "Windows Application" template - and I followed the instructions on the MS site linked above to export the tables etc.

Maybe it can already handle over 32k files then - to be honest I haven't tried. A colleague started this one and said Wise couldn't compile the MSI so I said I'd pick it up to cos he's on leave for a week now, I presumed the problem was with the number of files and the 32k file limitation with Windows Installer.

Maybe I'll just stick with 2 MSIs - it's going quite well [:)]

ORIGINAL: MSIPackager

Surely i2 relates the the attributes column though - this won't affect the maximum no of files allowed in the MSI and presumably changing this could cause problems elsewhere...

Not sure what you mean by the right template? The package is based on the Wise "Windows Application" template - and I followed the instructions on the MS site linked above to export the tables etc.

Maybe it can already handle over 32k files then - to be honest I haven't tried. A colleague started this one and said Wise couldn't compile the MSI so I said I'd pick it up to cos he's on leave for a week now, I presumed the problem was with the number of files and the 32k file limitation with Windows Installer.

Maybe I'll just stick with 2 MSIs - it's going quite well [:)]


the reason why he can't complete the MSI is probably the same as with my problem that I described above. It's easy to check if it can take more then 32767 files by simply right clicking in the filetable and selecting "Column Info". If it says "Long" underneath the Sequence Columnheader than it can take about 3.5 milioen files.

Yep it says Long NOT NULL so presumably it can handle a mere 41000... and I haven't made any schema changes!

Maybe you are right and it is the same problem with the SFN thing. That's a strange one though cos in my experience Wise does filena~1.gif, filena~2.gif through to filena~z.gif then has filena~z.gif for every reference from then on...

Will get the 2 MSI solution done first and if I get time try it again into 1 MSI and post up the findings.... as if anyone is interested lol


Cheers,
Rob.

Good luck [:)]