New PACE Suite 4.3 - the fastest MSI packaging tool

April, 25, 2017

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 environment
Below you can find the detailed information about the packaging environment we used in our speed tests.

pace suite pacakging environment

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 results
It 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 File

export registry pace suite

Now 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 information

import com net pace suite

Now 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.

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New PACE Suite 4.3 – the fastest MSI packaging tool