[vbox-dev] Size optimizations of multi-arch Windows distribution of VirtualBox

[Andreas - Sun Microsystems]

Hi Alexey,

as you already correctly noticed, we're now shipping both, 32- and 
64-bit executables/modules, with the Windows installer. This provides
maximum compatibility on these platforms. Files which can be the same on 
both platforms (like documentation) are only stored once
of course. There's maybe room for some small tweaks here and there to
squeeze out a few KB (like NLS support + typelib), but it's not on top
of our priority list at the moment.

-Andreas.



Alexey Eremenko wrote:
> The Windows version of VirtualBox grew from 11 MB (v1.3.2) to 70+ MB (v3.1.0).
> 
> Biggest change took place from v2.1.x (40 MB) to v2.2.0 (65 MB), due
> to multi-arch binary (32/64-bit combo).
> 
> Guest Additions ISO take a lion's share of space -- 32 MB (if 7zip
> compressed it takes 20 MB)
> 
> Why is the multi-arch Windows setup is so fat ?
> 
> Possible optimization scenario:
> -The multi-arch binary setup can include everything 32-bit (GUI, docs,
> ...), except the kernel drivers (vboxdrv and vboxnetflt) which should
> be 32/64-bit. Do we need any other components to be 64-bit ?
> -Which compression do we use? We can try to improve compression of
> Windows installer. (LZMA anyone?)
> 
> Those optimizations can cut about 20 MB+ from VirtualBox binary setup.
>