Compression Engines in InstallAware

As of InstallAware X2, two compression engines are provided with the product. This change has been introduced to optimize the InstallAware engine runtime size.

As of InstallAware X8, a third compression engine is also available. This engine aims to produce the smallest possible packages and is used in the two highest compression grades (heuristic optimized and binary optimized) available with InstallAware. When using these two highest compression grades, the compression engine packaged with built setups is managed internally by InstallAware, and the following discussion does not apply.

Engine Locations

The full compression engine is installed inside your main InstallAware folder, under the name mia.lib, as in previous versions of InstallAware.

The size optimized compression engine is installed inside the interop subfolder of your main InstallAware folder, under the name mia.lib. This is new since InstallAware X2.

Switching Engines

Setups are built using the size optimized compression engine by default (the DLL file found at interop\mia.lib).

You may rename or backup this file and replace it with the full compression engine instead.

You would need to do this only if you invoke any of the following commands in your setup script:

Or if you invoke any of the following commands in your setup script, but only on archive types other than 7ZIP archives:

You do not need to use the full compression engine if you use only the following commands on only 7ZIP archives:

Default InstallAware setups, templates, wizard created projects, and application runtime installers are fully satisfied with the size optimized compression engine.