[wix-users] Burn's MSI Size Limitation - Single MSI payload overflow

[Shay Martin]

So distribute the bootstrapped MSI with the cabinet files? We would like to
keep it all in one, if possible. What is the downfall embedding cabinet
files? Why even provide the embed option?

On Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 9:19 AM, Rob Mensching <rob at firegiant.com> wrote:

> Use MediatTemplate and don't embed cabinets in the MSI. Don't embed
> cabinets in MSIs anyway.
>
> _____________________________________________________________
>  Short replies here. Complete answers over there:
> http://www.firegiant.com/
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wix-users [mailto:wix-users-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org] On Behalf
> Of Shay Martin
> Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2016 6:54 AM
> To: wix-users at lists.wixtoolset.org
> Subject: [wix-users] Burn's MSI Size Limitation - Single MSI payload
> overflow
>
> Hello,
>
> I currently have an MSI installer. This MSI needs to be bootstrapped using
> burn to provide an .exe that passes the appropriate administrative
> elevation to a script that is executed on install finalize, this script
> does some prerequisite work required for our software. Administrative
> elevation is required for this script.
>
> There is no way around not using a script executed by the installer,
> sadly, as I know this is not good practice. When executing the MSI
> directly, the script is not passed along the administrative elevation,
> despite defining the appropriate WIX elements/attributes in our source.
> However, excuting the bootstrapped .exe correctly passes elevation to the
> script.
>
> So our solution is to bootstrap the MSI. The problem, our software is
> rapidly growing, when the MSI was sub ~2GB in size, Burn was able to
> provide an .exe. Now, our MSI is reaching a size of ~4GB, Burn can no
> longer create an .exe and results in an overflow error when linking (light)
> our source.
>
> There is no way for us to break apart our large MSI into smaller MSI(s).
> Our single MSI has a custom UI for feature based installation.
>
> I did some digging around, someone indicated the MSI payload size defined
> in the Wix source for Burn is a 32 bit integer, yielding an upper limit for
> a single MSI to be bootstrapped around ~2GB.
>
> Is there a solution to get Burn to bootstrap this larger MSI?
>
> ____________________________________________________________________
> WiX Toolset Users Mailing List provided by FireGiant
> http://www.firegiant.com/
>
> ____________________________________________________________________
> WiX Toolset Users Mailing List provided by FireGiant
> http://www.firegiant.com/
>