If you haven't installed it yet and yours is a .Net Free machine, the size of the support structure for Delphi 2007 may come as, well .... a bit of a surprise.
Are you
"one of them" ... as I once was, who swears "
all that .Not crap will never find its way onto my hard drive"? Have you
conscientiously managed to kept your machine a
.Net free zone? Were you always planning to keep it that way, for as long as you owned your machine? Did the Delphi 2007 bug get you too and now, in a moment of apparent weakness, you have decided to give in to the .Net demon, primarily because you really,
really want to install and use Delphi 2007 ... well then, be prepared for a wee bit of disk space usage shock.
All that work you've done, keeping the drive lean, tidy and uncluttered by continuously ferreting out and getting rid of all the old unused files and utilities ... is about to pay dividends. The bloated and unwieldy behemoth known as .Net 2.x is lumbering your way and it plans on thunderously and unceremoniously squatting on a very, very large portion of your hard drive. What's more ... it's bringing a bunch of it's equally distended [and to my specific needs, outside of D2007 IDE support - equally useless] friends. Oh yea ... fun times!
If there was a web site for "Hard Drive Space ... Pig of the Year" I would have to say that, considering the support files needed to install it on a .Net free system, Delphi for Object Pascal 2007 would most certainly become the new poster child. In fairness though, any .Net dependant piece of software going onto a .Net free machine would do the same.
It was indeed a bit of a shock when, having taken a break from happily playing with all the new features and getting the IDE set up - just the way I like it, I had a look at both my hard-drive disk usage and the new items found under the Programs folder. The shock was so intense, I seem to have lost my CodeGear pom-poms :)
Ah ... there they are, never mind.
I have to admit, thinking I could get away with it forever, was pretty unrealistic. You can actually ... but you would have to forgo anything beyond Delphi 7. Had I kept up with all the .Net installs as well as the additional support files that get installed in the process, I expect I would have to consider Delphi 2007 itself to actually, be pretty lean. The problem is, there's been so much gype installed with it ... I just can't tell.
In truth, it's not like I didn't see it coming;
Of course, I didn't really expect to find;
- Microsoft Visual Studio 8 and
- Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 in addition to
- Microsoft.NET
hiding away in the Programs Files folder ... but I did. Somehow, an apparently un-deletable [currently], "microsoft frontpage" folder has also sprouted in my Program Files folder, but I don't know if I can blame the recent .Net infestation for that?
Woohoo :(
Yea, it's all a bit of a shock and although some are finding it somewhat more annoying than others. You have to consider ... this is a professional development tool. Typically installed on a machine with little or no other software. Would it be nice, to have a quick, clean Win32 install of a Win32 IDE for Win32 developers? One that doesn't need any of the .Net support files? Sure it would. Is it going to happen? No, I don't believe for a second that it will. CodeGear needs a single IDE for all the products it produces and several of them need the .Net support files. Read the links above ... the IDE needs the .Net support files.
Would I give up Delphi 2007 for a leaner hard drive and no .Net? Not bloody likely.
Would I recommend that you install it? In a heartbeat!
Have I looked at most of the installed support files and wondered how much of it can I rip out of there and not break things ... oh, yea.
Am I going to bother? I seriously doubt it.
Unfortunately, it's simply so much easier to just think of it all from a slightly different perspective; now my machine is ready for all of that cool .Not crap I've been secretly hoping to have a peek at :)
Shrug it off big guy, let's move on ... time to get back in the game.
Thanks for stopping by,
--
Dave
Have a look at my blog (http://memyselfanddelphi.blogspot.com/2007/03/delphi-for-win32-part-5-new-beginning.html or http://preview.tinyurl.com/3a3ebr) for a breakdown of where that space goes on a .net free machine installing the PRO SKU...
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's easy to save a few GB of data if you want... Start by deleting all *folders* inside the directory pointed to by the arrow in that blog post; that will get rid of the install cache. Don't delete the *files* directly inside that weird folder: they're required for the auto and manual updates.
(If you installed from an ESD, you can *backup* that whole folder to a DVD: re-installing is just a matter of first *copying* all that back to the same place on the new drive and then running the setup from there: if you run from the DVD, it will simply download it all again).
As for another 600 MB of trash, delete the "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Microsoft .NET 2.0 SDK - ENU" folder: it's *another* copy of the install files for .NET 2.0 SDK...
And finally, since you don't use .NET, you can get rid of the .NET help in Delphi 2007 by simply deleting this folder:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft.NET\SDK\v2.0\Docs\1033"
The result will be less erroneous content when searching for help in Delphi. (There are still some non-delphi contents, but those are in the delphi help folder: they're the Platform SDK help and you may want to keep those...
By deleting all this, for a PRO SKU, you get back aproximately 2.2 GB worth of space...
Final note: don't know if deleting the contents of the cached file in All Users will mess up with the updates (it may want to try to redownload all again!), but if that's the case, simply copy that back before the update then backup that new updated install cache for saving time in future installs...
Fernando,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments and the link to your article. I read your stuff and was actually going to link to that same article from mine.
You've done quite a bit of work to figure out what can safely be nuked and what needs to be saved ...
Thanks, I expect I'll be blowing up some of it :)
--
Dave
Well, I like to keep my C: drive small enough to be GHOSTed to a DVD... It takes some tinkering, but I've managed to do it safely so far, especially since GHOST also compresses well. If I run into *deep* trouble I just restore that and in 10 minutes I'm good to go! It will only take longer if it's due to H/W failure as I'll have to account for the Next Business Day repair... :)
ReplyDeleteDon't blame .Net for all of it. You might want to go hunting to find a copy of the ENTIRE install image. Deliberately, and quite uselessly left on the system by CodeGear's "marvelous" new install software.
ReplyDeleteThis might be almost excusable for downloaded versions (but not very. Put it somewhere it could be burned and deleted would make more sense), but is the height of Borland-esque behaviour for the DVD version.
The problem, Anonymous, is with the rushing of products. It's their first ESD and they could have done a much better thing if they had the time...
ReplyDeleteAnother weird call, that somehow they seem to blame on SOX, is the one of only making the ISO available for download for those *also* purchasing the Media Kit, that is, if you *buy* a DVD, you can download the ISO...
Besides, you *can* re-install on another machine: you just need some more work... Rather than simply burning that install cache, you need to actually *copy* it back to the same place in the new machine and run the setup from there. Not as easy as burning a DVD and simply hitting Setup, but not *that* hard to do...
Yea, the release and distribution of D2oo7 did seem to be a bit ballsed-up in places. Having waited until the last minute to jump in I was lucky enough to select the ESD and Media Kit options ... now, with an eye to your instructions [Fernando] I'll be doing a bit of clean-up.
ReplyDelete