Since I have a considerable number of built LabVIEW applications, and sometimes send new installers out by e-mail, it is very important to keep the sizes small. Still, I would like to provide an installer, and not just the executables.
(Of course I don't built installers containing the runtime engine, but simply request that it be downloaded and installed from NI. This saves considerable volume)
The builder (LabVIEW 7.1) generates 6 installer files:
-- data.cab (variable size)
-- install.msi (1616KB)
-- InstMsi.exe (1460KB)
-- InstMsiW.exe (1470KB)
-- setup.exe (68KB)
-- setup.ini (1KB)
The last two are small, so I don't worry about them. Obviously, I need to include the data.cab. Install.msi is also a changing file, thus must
be included.
This leaves InstMsi and InstMsiW. These seem to be just some version of the windows installer, similar to what can be downloaded from
Microsoft.
First, "InstMsi" seems to be for Windows 9x only. Since LabVIEW 7.1 only supports Windows 2000 and higher, it is not clear why it is even there.
"InstMsiW" is the Windows 2000, XP equivalent. On all PCs I tried, the installation works without problem even if this file is not present. Obviously, all these PCs already contain the functionality of it as part of the OS.
For a while now, I've been distributing zip archives of only 4 files (leaving out the instmsi*). The archives are sub-megabyte, instead of 3+ MB with all six files. Nobody ever had an problems installing.
Is it sound to leave these files out? What the worst case scenario if these are not included?