Question

For example, the .Net Framework 4.0 is available in either format. Is there any scenario where internet access is not a consideration (always on, high bandwidth) but the standalone installar option is the better choice?

Also, when utilizing a web installer, are there any specific advantages with respect to:

1) long-term disk space usage?
2) the ability to cleanly uninstall/repair the software?

Answer 1

There’s many ways to package and distribute that are all optimized for differnet scenarios. What works well for an online distribution would not work well for an offline distribution or even in-the-middle scenarios.

For example, consider .NET. They have a Web and a Full.

The full is pretty much going to be best for Media based distributions and Enterprise customers where they want to put the framework on a network share. The Web is going to work best for a single user (Home) that wants the shortest possible download.

To understand shortest understand that the .NET 3.5 SP1 installer is actually a bootstrapper with many packages to account for 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, SP’s, Hotfixes, 32bit components, 64bit components ( x64 and Itanium ).

For a home user with .NET 3.0 x86 OS there might be very little to download. For an enterprise user you can get it all from the network share without needing to repeatedly download bits from MSFT over and over. For a media customer their might not be any internet connection at all.

This is all seperate from caching concerns. An installer can choose to cache or not cache installation files regardless of whether it came from media, network or internet download on demand.

Other installs might not be as layered as .NET and have very little distinction between Web and Full. ( i.e. always all )