Vista, UAC and install files
So I downloaded America’s Army today - 2ish gig file. Free game and what not. Great. When I double-click the file in Vista … nothing happens. I think maybe it’s a big file, it’s taking a while to get into memory. But nope, like 30 seconds later, my computer seems to be doing absolutely nothing - no wait cursors or anything.
But really, something IS happening. UAC is verifying the signature (hash) of the file. Since its a 2 gig file, that’s taking a WHIIILE. So UAC is a POS right? Nope… the AA installer is.
USE .MSI FOR YOUR INSTALLERS! GAH. MSIs basically separate the install file into two files. You have the setup.msi and the setup.exe. The .msi let’s UAC check the signature and ask options from the user and such and then when you click “Install >”, it hands things over to setup.exe. What’s the difference? Since .msi files don’t actually contain any data from what’s being installed (at least not a significant amount), they load very quickly and UAC can verify the signature. Another benefit is that I don’t have to wait a minute for the installer to load all the data. I can just go through the wizard, start the install and go do something else, while the installer takes it’s sweet time to load setup.exe and install the actual files.
Why developers don’t bother using this is … annoying… Bleh. I like UAC. I like the whole redirect stuff it does so I don’t get spyware and all that bad jazz. But annoying crap like this probably turns a lot of people off.
