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A comment on Comparing Windows uninstallers, getting upset and then deciding to make my own. Parent comment

Re:Comparing Windows uninstallers, getting upset and then de... by viraptor on Saturday August 19, 2023 @06:25AM (#37187303)
I'm amazed how much MS is failing with the MSI. You'd expect that in Visual Studio (the proper one, not code) there would be a simple way to say: this project - compile it and stick into MSI with just bare defaults. But no, you essentially have to get a third party thing to manage creating that for you, and even those involve custom scripting that requires another custom generator on top to get the list of files to install (looking at you, Vix). And no, the publish to Azure or ClickOnce are not reasonable options.

VB5 came with a built in installer generator - how did we regress from there?

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Re:Comparing Windows uninstallers, getting upset and then de... by dextersgenius on Saturday August 19, 2023 @06:56AM (#37187462)
MSIs are so bloated and horribly designed, it isn't even funny. Why does it insist on storing a copy of the entire .msi - and any patches - in C:\Windows\Installer? From what I've observed, the original MSI is required to perform repairs and reconfiguration, or setting up new-user defaults for that app. This seems horribly inefficient to me, and on heavily used system this can easily waste space on the C: drive.

And occasionally you run into issues with the MSI database corrupting, where you can't install/upgrade/uninstall something (we see this commonly with Adobe apps) , so you'd need to resort to third-party tools like MSI Zapper to get rid of all the references from the database. What a messy system.

I miss the days when programs used to use NSIS (Nullsoft) installers - they were tiny, and super easy to make and automate.

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Re:Comparing Windows uninstallers, getting upset and then de... by alkonaut on Saturday August 19, 2023 @02:32PM (#37191674)
To make an uninstall of course you need the msi db parts (but you wouldn’t need the entire binary content). To make a reinstall (aka repair) you DO need both the db and the content.

I haven’t heard msis being bloated. I assume they contain exactly what they need to contain (though unsure about compression methods).

In the past when storage was scarce it seems like a strange design but these days I can’t say it feels so wrong.

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