[texworks] Call for Help: Testing

[Paul A Norman]

ok,

Prob not really worth trying to UPX a properly constructed installer as you
point out. It appears to possibly only try to UPX the stub depending on how
the installer handles things anyway.

Did an exhaustive set of tests that I'll keep for other things as well, as a
benchmark as there is actually a useful mix of different types of stuff in
each Tw update, the worst culprit on Xp standard NTFS  on disk, is the
popler data - some disk wastage reationg to sector sizes, with so many small
files.

Most of my tests involved extracting form the latest Tw zip and then
re-compressing the deflated files with various techniques, UPXing and not
UPXing the dll and exe.

The conclusion appears to be that a LZMA 7Zip self extractor can be made
(10.7 MB) that is about 6mb smaller than the standard curent Tw developer
update zip.

Or a straight forward 7Zip .7z archive can be made (10.6 Mb) that is also
about six Mb smaller than the current development  .zip  (16.7 MB).

Also if the dll and exe are UPXed then a SelfExtractor (SFX) can be made
with 7Zip that is still only 12.4Mb

Perhaps helpful for any one on slower connections and or using a
thumb-drives from time to time, who is needing to keep up with the fixes.

What ever else, it all gives us some idea of available compressions.

File attached.

Paul

On 21 April 2011 09:54, Paul A Norman <paul.a.norman at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes, UPX actually has a go at the binary, where as standard zipping has
> traditionally only been able to handle text type stuff.
>
> Will attempt that at some point and get back on it.
>
> Keep in mind though its not just download,  on a portable type setup, once
> installed, every saved  Mb tends to end up being useful at some point :)
>
> Paul
>
>
>
> On 21 April 2011 03:36, Stefan Löffler <st.loeffler at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  On 2011-04-18 23:47, Paul A Norman wrote:
>>
>> If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, its
>> probably a duck.
>> On Windows at least,  with their Qt shading, this component look more like
>> a button than anything else.
>>
>>
>> OK, seeing them as buttons that open menus/dialogs is understandable. I'll
>> see what I can do.
>>
>>
>>
>>   > I was looking
>>> > through http://code.google.com/p/texworks/source/list trying to
>>> > identify what else there was to check...
>>> >
>>> > Re-compression --
>>> >
>>> > I noticed http://code.google.com/p/texworks/source/detail?r=763#
>>> > Hasnlt helped us much yet, did another check on latest exe ...
>>>
>>>  Yeah, it was just a first attempt, I didn't have time to look into this
>>> issue in detail yet. As far as (stable) releases are concerned, I'd
>>> prefer to go with uncompressed files, as they don't change that often
>>> (people don't have to download too much), hard disk space is not that
>>> limitted anymore these days (we're talking about 21MB) and speed is nice
>>> to have.
>>
>> For "daily" testing builds, OTOH, I agree that size matters,
>>> and speed does not so much. Still, I'd like to investigate this first.
>>>
>>>
>>  Its worth it, there are still considerable numbers of people in
>> developing countries who rely on speeds little better, or the same as dial
>> up modems. I know one man in the Philipines who has been unable to guarantee
>> a connection for ten minutes without it going down and requires
>> reconnection, and have seen people in Fiji even near main nodes, have to
>> wait over an hour to process a small raft of plain text emails.
>>
>>
>> Of course. OTOH, the installer already is quite a bit smaller than the
>> archive, so it would be reasonable to download that if speed/capacity is an
>> issue. Just to check, could you run UPX on the installer and see if it gets
>> (significantly) smaller? (My guess is no, but if I'm wrong I'll look into
>> using UPX on the installer; on the one hand, it's smaller to begin with, and
>> on the other it is run only once, so any startup lag is no problem).
>>
>> In the meantime, I've looked a little bit into the issue with the main
>> TeXworks.exe. It seems that Qt stores quite a lot of information on
>> properties, methods, UI, ... as plain text in the .exe. This, naturally, can
>> be compressed efficiently, yielding the much smaller size you reported.
>> However, the files to download are compressed in a .zip archive. Therefore,
>> I'd suspect that replacing the TeXworks.exe in the .zip file by an UPX'ed
>> one would make only a minor difference. The .exe is smaller, but it won't be
>> compressed anymore by the zip algorithm (right now, the compressed size is
>> about 50% smaller than the uncompressed one). So, again, I would suspect the
>> difference between an UPX'ed version and a non-UPX'ed one in a zip archive
>> to be small (though non-zero, as I expect the UPX algorithm to give somewhat
>> better results than zip).
>>
>> Regards,
>> Stefan
>>
>
>
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?TeXworks-w32-0.5-r804.zip   16.7mb 16.7 mb on disk 
 
tW 0.5 VER804 Uncompressed to a folder 29.7 Mb 35.0 Mb on NTSF disk (out of box Xp settings)


7Z estimated the disk space uncompressed to be 37Mb

re-compressed the extract of TeXworks-w32-0.5-r804.zip normal 7z compression
as:

tW 0.5 VER804.7z  11.0 MB and 11.0 MB on disk

Then first UPXed the extracted binaries and again re-compressed the extract of TeXworks-w32-0.5-r804.zip 
as:

tW 0.5 VER804(binaries UPXed) MAX 7z compression.7z 12.2 MB 12.2 MB 

Then with UPX-ed on extracted binaries (exe dll) and again re-compressed the extract of TeXworks-w32-0.5-r804.zip 
as:

tW 0.5 VER804(binaries UPXed) MAX PPMD compression.7z 13.7 MB 13.7 MB


re-compressed the extract of TeXworks-w32-0.5-r804.zip Ultra 7z compression
as:

tW 0.5 VER804(binaries NOT UPXed) MAX (Ultra) 7z compression LZMA.7z
    
     10.6 MB and 10.7 MB


Next making a self extracting archive, re-compressed the extract of TeXworks-w32-0.5-r804.zip
 (people don't have to have 7z installed):

tW 0.5 VER804 SFX (binaries NOT UPXed) MAX (Ultra) 7z compression LZMA.exe

    10.7 MB 10.7 MB


FInally binaries UPXed and made into an Ultra 7z Self Extractor
(TeXworks.exe 8.18 MB 8.18 MB - was 20.6  MB
 python27.dll   99 KB   99 KB - was  2.17 MB)


tW 0.5 VER804 SFX (binaries UPXed) MAX (Ultra) 7z compression LZMA.exe

   12.4 MB 12.4 MB