Am I the only one who thinks 4.2 Install takes a long time?

[BobMerrill]

I just downloaded Flare 4.2 and installed it.

As with Flare 4.1, the size of the installer package was over 200Mb. In my opinion this package is bloated with unnecessary stuff. After installing 4.1, I sent the following message. I've sent it again for 4.2, with a little more exasperation in my tone.

Here's the message I sent for 4.1. Outside of an increase in the size of the installer package, nothing's changed.

<vent>
I have a reasonably fast DSL connection (2.8Mbit, 1.3Mb faster than a T1). It took me nearly an hour to download Flare 4.1. It had doubled in size in the past year or so. Flare 4.2 takes 332Mb on my C: drive, 309Mb of which is in the Flare.app/Resources directory.

So far, I've identified these completely unnecessary files in the Flare.app/Resources directory:

- The AdobeAIR SDK - 25Mb
- The contents of the Guides folder - 61.6Mb - These should be downloadable on demand
- The contents of the Flare.mchelpf/Movies folder - 50Mb - These should be streamed. You already expect us to have broadband connections if you want us to download 200Mb of software.
- Flare.mchelpf/Resources/Images contains 60Mb of images. Many are as large as 250K. I have a hard time believing that you need JPGs that large.

I'll let the 11Mb of sounds go. The list above unzips to 196Mb. That is 2/3 of the footprint of this software.

When you increase the size of the file, it not only increases the download substantially, but also the installation. Think about it - I download a 200Mb zip file. After downloading, it takes well over a minute just to write to disk. Then when you install it, it unzips a copy of the installer files, which then unzips another copy of the actual files. I don't think it would take a lot of effort to reduce the size of the zip file by half. If you dealt with the list above, you should be able to reduce it by 2/3 without much sacrifice.

The time it took me to do the research and write this memo was less than half the time it took me to download the software. It took me another 15 minutes or so to unzip and install it.
</vent>

Bob

[RamonS]

Welcome to the DotNet world using uncompressed binaries and the MSI installer packages to make our lives miserable. The download was OK, although our enterprise GIS app written in Delphi clocks in at 8 MB plus a few small dlls. Uncompressed the executable balloons to 64 MB. We do have quite a bit of code as sprocs in SQL Server, but a bare db adds only a meager 3 MB on to it.
I think the file size of the installer is only an issue for those with slow internet connections, but I wonder if the DotNet based binaries can be compressed, even when it is semi-compiled code that gets interpreted by the runtime (which by itself is already a pig). In the end it is a matter of drive space usage and I have no idea if in comparison Flare's footprint is reasonable.

The installer just rapidly inhales as all Microsoft Installer based install packages do. It is slow, does a bad job, leaves large files behind just to do an uninstall, and is lightyears behind other installers that do not use the MSI engine. Microsoft Installer is just bad to the bone and since Flare 1.0 I keep begging MadCap to ditch MSI for something that not only produces smaller installer packages, but that foremost has a good chance to work fine.

I know from previous versions that the installation takes the better part of a workday spending insane amounts of time of doing nothing as it seems. Since I only use Flare at home I started the install before I went to bed and by the time I got up it was done. I have no idea what the holdup is. Since Flare is a DotNet app the only thing the installer really needs to do is slap the files in the right place and maybe write a few registry entries. Given a moderately fast hard drive that should not take longer than a few minutes.

I'm with you on this one, but I have no solution other than to complain to MadCap.

[BobMerrill]

I think the file size of the installer is only an issue for those with slow internet connections

As one who just went from an ISDN line (128k) to 2.8Mb DSL, I hope that I'm no longer in the slow connection category. If so, I really feel for the people around here (Vermont) that have dialup - they typically get 14k connections. I can't imagine downloading the installer on one of those. Even with my ISDN line, it would take the better part of 6 hours when the installer was in the 100Mb range.

Bob

[Andrew]

This is an issue that MadCap will be unable to satisfy all users without providing many different download packages. I'm not sure how good a solution that would be, as you then have to figure out which of the packages you want. And ultimately, of course, it's only worthwhile if enough people really want to pick-and-choose what they download, rather than getting it all in one package. I wonder how many folks have a problem with the file sizes?

For example, I don't care about file size (within reason). 200 MB? 50 MB? 500 MB? It's all the same to me. If it takes a couple of hours to download, it doesn't bother me. I do it once every few months (sometimes it's 1-2 months, sometimes 6-8). However, I *do* care to make sure I have the latest versions of Flare documentation when I install a new version of Flare, and I'd rather not have to download them separately.

How do you know the AdobeAIR SDK is unnecessary? I would guess it is required to produce WebHelp AIR help targets. You may not need that feature, but others who do might be just as irritated as you are if they have to download a separate package for it.

As for things like unzip times and file copy times...I have no idea why it takes so long to unzip and install Flare...it's really not that large. I can only assume that it's doing some kind of verifications to ensure that the files are not corrupt, etc. It's certainly not a function of file size (200 MB copies in 10 seconds or less on any reasonably modern hard drive). It could be some artifact of MSI installers, as RamonS suggests.

[Richard Ferrell]

The install Of Flare v4.2 Does Uninstall The Previous version of Flare on your system, so this does add time to the install, Any Future Upgrades to Flare v4.2 should only be small updates,

[RamonS]

OK, but whacking a handful of folders should not add any significant time to the installation.

[brianlaing]

Indeed - it does seem to take a long time - but I managed to make it last a lot longer!

I decided to see what the footprint of the new install was gong to be so I clicked Disk Cost. It happily told me how much room it was going to take. Closing the Disk Cost window I clicked next to proceed with the install, only to have the Disk Cost window reappear.

I ended up having to cancel the installation. I guess I could have looked in the Temp directory for the installer, but restarted Flare 4.1 and went through the original procedure of getting and then installing the latest version.

Is this a bug or is this because it's Friday and I'm tired?

Cheers,
Brian