InstallAware X18 generates installers 3x larger than X2

[AleBlengio]

Hello InstallAware Support,

We have observed a significant increase in installer size after moving from InstallAware X2 to X18.

Using the same project content (approximately 3 GB of installed files), we obtain:

InstallAware X2: approximately 500 MB.

InstallAware X18: approximately 1.5 GB.

The compression settings are left at their default values in both versions.

To investigate, we compressed the extracted payload with 7-Zip using LZMA2 at maximum compression:

Solid compression (-ms=on): approximately 400 MB.

Non-solid compression (-ms=off): approximately 1.8 GB.

These results suggest that solid compression, or another aspect of how files are grouped for compression, could explain the size difference.

Could you please clarify whether InstallAware X2 and X18 differ in their default compression behavior, particularly regarding solid compression, compression block sizes, or the compression engine? Is there a project or command-line setting in X18 that can reproduce the smaller installer size obtained with X2?

Thank you.

[JohnGaver]

That's definitely not the expected result.

InstallAware should handily defeat the weaker LZMA2 algorithm, which is primarily optimized for multi-core (faster, but weaker) compression.

That's to say nothing of the fact that InstallAware has updated its compression engine since X2 several times, offering far stronger modes of compression than what was available before.

I believe you may have already answered your own question though! The defaults may have been downgraded, to allow for compatibility with more devices - the stronger compression settings do require substantial amounts of memory (up to 40 GB physical RAM per package [at compression time only, of course - not during deployment]).

Please check your Project Options dialog, Build | Compression node. There's detailed explanations for each step of the compression slider there, which should help dispel the cloud of confusion here.

If you're still seeing odd results, please ensure to share specific details here: At a minimum, we'll need to know which grades of compression you're comparing.

To clarify, X18 ought to easily exceed X2 in both speed and size at any equivalent grade, while unlocking new grades that are completely unavailable in X2, of course.