PACE Suite 4.3 – the Fastest MSI Packaging Tool

We have just released PACE Suite 4.3 and together with several new features, we made it the fastest tool to build MSI packages. In this blog post, we will provide a detailed overview of our internal tests.Our packaging environmentBelow you can find the detailed information about the packaging environment we used in our speed tests.Virtual Box 5.1.18 r114002 virtual machine configuration:

• Processor: 2 virtual x64-based CPUs
• RAM: 4 GB
• Hard drive: SATA HDD 50 GB
• Video memory: 128 MB
• Guest OS: Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit OS (10.0, Build 10586)

Physical machine configuration:

• Processor: i5-3230M CPU @ 2.60GHz
• RAM: 8 GB
• Hard drive: SATA HDD 1 TB
• Video memory: 1 GB
• Host OS: Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit OS (10.0, Build 10586)

We purposely used a relatively slow machine so that our tests could be closer to different packaging environments. We chose four installers of various sizes and contents for the benchmark tests (all trademarks and rights belong to their respective owners): MiKTeX, Anaconda, AutoCAD, and Matlab.Internal speed test resultsIt is worth to emphasize that these internal tests were very dependent on our packaging environment, and the results may differ on other machines and with other packages. However, even with certain deviations, the speed of building MSI packages became truly remarkable. Here are the results of our internal tests:Installer

MSI building time

Output package size

Number of files

Number of registry entries

Matlab R2017a 9.2

2h 06m 34s

2.77 GB

147 524

594

AutoCAD 2018 3.1.0.175

1h 03m 02s

4.80 GB

16 776

18 078

Anaconda 4.3.1

32m 25s

1.29 GB

16 318

21

MiKTeX 2.9

6m 35s

0.29 GB

13 509

184

Previously, opening a large MSI in MSI Editor took a substantial amount of time. We have improved the Open MSI feature as well, so now you can open packages significantly faster:Installer

MSI opening time using 

PACE Suite 4.2

MSI opening time using 

PACE Suite 4.3

Matlab R2017a 9.2

14m 41s

2m 17s

AutoCAD 2018 3.1.0.175

29s

24s

MiKTeX 2.9

4m 2s

14s

But wait, there is more!Apart from making PACE Suite the fastest application packaging tool, the 4.3 release introduces several new features as well.Export Registry to REG FileNow you can export registry entries from your MSI package to the REG file using MSI Editor. Registry export is available from different places, and the created REG file will have the latest 5.00 format version.Import .NET Assemblies and 64-bit COM informationNow the Import Files Wizard allows extracting and importing to the package both 32-64 bit COM information and .NET assemblies. Just import new files to the package by selecting the ‘Import COM information’ option on the last step of the wizard.Please read PACE Suite v4.3 Release Notes for the full overview of the new features and some bug fiexs. Also, check our updated PACE Suite User Manual.