DAT files growing in size

[mdavtec]

We have several projects' installations, a mix of MSI and EXE. Each of them creates a cache in %PROGRAMDATA% folder when installed. What we are seeing is that with each repair/upgrade installation of the program, this DAT file grows in size. In our testing, we noticed that DAT files grow in GB and then the installation fails.


I want to know if is there a way to prevent the DAT file from growing. If not, is there a way to tell InstallAware to not create a cache in the ProgramData folder? We tried setting "Always Cache Setup Sources" to FALSE / DEFAULT but it is not working.

[mdavtec]

I see that each execution of installation, even if it does nothing, adds following lines -- or something similar -- to the DAT file.

MYAH-PREDEF-COMPONENT
0
DEFAULT
0

[JohnGaver]

Could you please clarify how many runs of the setup you had before DAT files grew to gigabytes in size?

The snippet you shared would probably take a million (or billion) launches to achieve that effect?

[mdavtec]

Hi John,
Thanks for your response.


For the setup program, which is showing the issue, the DAT file increases by 3 times every time it is called.

The size of the DAT file after 1st installation was 254 Bytes. After 7 executions of same installation program, the size of the DAT file is 171,886 Bytes.

I ran the same Setup.exe program 8th time and the file size grew to 515,245 Byes. The diff shows that it added following texts to the DAT file.
--
MYAH-PREDEF-COMPONENT - 4373 Lines

TRUE - 4374 Lines

// Two lines together
"MYAH-PREDEF-COMPONENT
25502319" - 13122 Lines
--

Let me know if you have any questions.

[JohnGaver]

Please upgrade to the latest version of InstallAware, which has already resolved this issue.

[mdavtec]

I tried with the latest version that I downloaded couple of days back - X16 (v33.14.159.2024) but seeing the same, identical growth in the DAT file size. DAT file grows by same identical amount as we are seeing with version X14.

Little bit of history
Originally, we were using IA v18 (v18.x.x.x) and then we didn't have this problem. Then we upgraded to IA X14 (v31.01.00.2021) and then we started seeing the issue. This is the version we are using with our shipped product components.

[JohnGaver]

I see that you have an open support ticket (private) with us with <redacted> participating.

Since we were unable to resolve your issue here, please refer to that ticket for future updates.

Thank you very much for this opportunity to be of service!