MAKEMSI quickly and reliably creates MSI files in a non-programmatic way\Source CodeCommandsCompile

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The "Compile" Command

This command will be used for these main reasons:

• To vary the compile (MakeCab.EXE) options, for example some already compressed files take ages to process if you try to recompress them or they may compress faster with different options
• You may wish to control the size or composition of the cab files.
• You may wish to cache the compile so that the build is faster. when there have been no (or few) file changes since the last build.
• You may need to work around one of the cabinet file limitations.

When used this command will compile all files that you have added with the "File" and "Files" commands since the last compile, it takes these parameters:

• Reason (positional)
  You can supply a reason for the compile. This is for display/logging purposes only.

• Cache (optional)
  Default is "" (no cache). If a non blank value is passed then this indicates that you wish to cache the compiled output for reuse in future builds. Requiring you to identify the group of files allows you to make significant changes to your scripts without effecting the cache status.

  Only use characters which are valid in folder names as a subfolder with the name you supply will be created under the directory defined by the macro "MAKEMSI_COMPILE_CACHE_DIR" (you can completely disable caching by "clearing" this macro).

  A current limitation is that it won't correctly cache output which has created more than one cabinet file.

  See the section below for more details.

EXAMPLE: Grouping Files & varying parameters for Compiles

You may have some pre-compressed or large files for which you want to adjust the default "compile options" to turn off or reduce the level of compression to speed up the msi build. The following code (which can be added to the end of "TryMe.MM for testing) demonstrates this:

;--- Grab all the files in "SRC" directory (don't compress some) ------------
#define+ COMPILE_MAKECAB_VERBOSITY                3            ;;Max info
#define+ COMPILE_DELETE_CAB_FILES_IN_LOG_DIR      N            ;;Want to (easily) examine the .cab files (so leave in "LOG" dir)
<$Compile>                                                     ;;Start "Clean" : Compile files listed in "Tryme.MM" (above)
<$MacroCfg "COMPILE_CABDDF_Compress" PreExists="Y">            ;;Save correct value of this setting (so we don't need to "know" the original setting)
<$MacroCfg "COMPILE_CAB_FILE_NAME"   PreExists="Y">            ;; "
    #define+ COMPILE_CABDDF_Compress OFF                       ;;Zips are already compressed so we don't want to slow down the compile by recompressing
    #define+ COMPILE_CAB_FILE_NAME   NC*                       ;;Give CAB a "non compression" prefix (to remind me)
    <$Files "SRC\*.zip" DestDir="INSTALLDIR" EXLIST="COMPOFF"> ;;Add ZIPs and build  exclusion list of these files
    <$Files "SRC\*.rar" DestDir="INSTALLDIR" EXLIST="COMPOFF"> ;;Add RARs and update exclusion list of these files
    <$Compile>                                                 ;;Now compile the .zip & .rar files
<$/MacroCfg>                                                   ;;Restore "normal" state (could have just set to "ON" for this simplistic example)
<$/MacroCfg>                                                   ;; "
<$Files "SRC\*.*" DestDir="INSTALLDIR" EXLIST="COMPOFF">       ;;Add the rest of the files

The above example didn't use the cache (and there may not be much point for the ".zip" and ".rar" as we are not compressing them now), but you could add this command to the end of the example to have the "rest" of the files cached (another way to do this would be to adjust "COMPILE_CACHE_VALUE_FOR_COMPILE_ENDPASS1"):

<$Compile cache="TheRest" "Compiling the rest of the files">

CACHE: Using the "CACHE" Parameter

The cache allows you to avoid the possibly lengthy "MakeCab.EXE" steps since it remembers the results from the last time a set of files was compiled and will then only create a new cabinet file if one or more of that group of files has changed.

You would want to cache files if they take a long time to compile. It would pay to group files based on update frequency as any differences will cause the whole lot to be rebuilt, if this is not practical then you may wish to group by alphabet or some other scheme. Of course if you had one very large and slow file you would compile this one file on its own!

Without the cache you might be tempted to reduce the compression options for some files, however you are probably more prepared to take "a hit" if its only for the first time you build and perhaps infrequently after this...

Apart from file changes a rebuild will occur if:

1. The file order was changed. Note that the "Files" command sorts filenames before adding them (so this doesn't depend on the file system's file ordering).

2. Any compile option (that affects the ".ddf") is changed.

To determine if the cache is current the contents of the two ".ddf" files (cached & newly built) are compared after stripping out all comments except for those that mark the file details (that is begin with ";>>>").

CACHE: Add File Content Checking

By default only the file modification time and file size is used to indicate the "version" of a file (which is almost always enough).

You can change the following macro to define a replacement function which could look at a files contents (using an MD5 hash, will it slow it down too much though?) etc:

#( '<?NewLine>'
   #define? COMPILE_VBSCRIPT_FUNCTION_CacheFileStamp

   '---------------------------------------
   'Available objects:
   '     * oFS
   '     * oInstaller
   '
   ' By default only modification time and file size matter (you could add file version, md5 etc)
   '---------------------------------------
   <?NewLine><?NewLine>

   function CacheFileStamp(ByVal FileName)      'Creates a string which should change if the file changes
        ;--- Want to generate a comment which identifies the file info ---
        CacheFileStamp = ""
        dim oFile : set oFile = oFS.GetFile(FileName)
            CacheFileStamp = <$COMPILE_VBSCRIPT_EXRESSION_CacheFileStamp>
        set oFile = Nothing
   end function
   <$COMPILE_VBSCRIPT_EXTRA_FUNCTIONS_CacheFileStamp>       ;;User may want to add their own functions and use "COMPILE_VBSCRIPT_EXRESSION_CacheFileStamp"
#)
#(
    #define? COMPILE_VBSCRIPT_EXRESSION_CacheFileStamp

    "FileSize:"        & oFile.Size &               ;;File size
    ", LastModified: " & oFile.DateLastModified     ;;Last modified
#)
#define? COMPILE_VBSCRIPT_EXTRA_FUNCTIONS_CacheFileStamp

If the returned stamp is "" or a non zero "err.number" is returned then a randomised one will be generated which will include the "err.number" and "err.description" (and thereby effectively disabling the cache). Note that all variables you use must be declared or it will fail.

The following code when added to the start of your script will add an MD5 file hash to the comparison:

#(
    #define COMPILE_VBSCRIPT_EXRESSION_CacheFileStamp

    "FileSize:"        & oFile.Size &               ;;File size
    ", LastModified: " & oFile.DateLastModified &   ;;Last modified
    ", MD5:"           & FileMd5(FileName)          ;;This alone will uniquely identify file but can be slow on big files (but faster than compile!)
#)
#( '<?NewLine>'
   #define COMPILE_VBSCRIPT_EXTRA_FUNCTIONS_CacheFileStamp

   '=========================================================================
   function FileMd5(ByVal FileName)     'Used by "COMPILE_VBSCRIPT_EXRESSION_CacheFileStamp"
   '=========================================================================
       FileMd5 = "?"
       dim oHash : set oHash = oInstaller.FileHash(FileName, 0)
       FileMd5 = PrettyHash(oHash)                  ;;PrettyHash() is defined by MAKEMSI
       set oHash = Nothing
   end function
#)

The information returned by "CacheFileStamp()" is stored in the ".DDF" file as demonstrated in the first line of this content (notice the MD5 we added):

;>>> FileSize:766, LastModified: 14/05/2004 3:01:08 PM, MD5:0076FBA0-47C5E6C0-01F96DCF-1D687C36 <<<
"TryMe.ico" TryMe.ico /DATE=2004-05-14 /TIME=15:01:08

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