Re: RAD Studio: Get rid of another 343 MB...

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
Nope, still doesn't make sense. To rollback to a previous state, you
need the previous files. So in fact you have two copies of a file (old
and current). Files are in duplicate so are always larger than having
only one of those copies.

Yes - both the original and patched file are present on the system, but only the patched file is in the proper place in the expected state. The original file can be tucked away in a CAB file inside a MSI file, compressed. When restored and decompressed, the original file can be larger than the compressed original and the expanded patched file.

Deleting the current copy and replacing it with a previous version you
have stored somewhere else - you are going to use *less* disk space
because the latest copy is now deleted. I see no need to check disk
space for uninstall!

MSI allows you to specify more then one source location. The local file approach is just one approach. I've seen companies install their MSI's so that the source is always on the network. It's a solution that works in some places. And in those cases, uninstalling a patch could take more space than before without having to go through the convolutions of the previous example.

My point is that there are a number of cases where an uninstall COULD take more space than the previous install, hence the need for checking disk space before an uninstall. But I'm also guessing that you've never found yourself in such a situation, or that you write your products and deploy them in such a way that this will never be necessary. Because your situations have never encountered this need doesn't mean that other setup developers have encountered this problem. The fact that MSI checks for this possibility means that to some degree, the MSI engineers are thinking of all possible scenarios and taking steps to deal with all those scenarios, even if they aren't common for a typical deployment. :)

Jason
.

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