3 ms·

also from the article: It is worth noting that DLLs no longer save disk space. In fact, the opposite is the case. If you have a look into the side-by-side repos

also from the article: It is worth noting that DLLs no longer save disk space. In fact, the opposite is the case. If you have a look into the side-by-side repository (found in Windows' WinSXS directory), you will find, that its 5 GB on Windows 7 and even 7 GB on Windows Server 2008, containing 40.000 files with numerous versions of roughly all Microsoft Libraries. That's about 50% of the disk space used by Windows in total. We were needing a solution, but we created a monster

roel_v 16y ago
I think this argument is wrong. Those 5GB are of separate versions of each DLL. If program A needs version 1 of a library and programs B and C need version 2, you only have to have 2 files - those of 1 and 2. B and C can share their copy. So they do save space. Now I don't know if it saves as much as the 5GB that the different versions take. This 5 GB is because there are so many versions. You could argue that they shouldn't be all installed, and that applications should install them on-demand, but that would require major deployment issues at vendors (especially those so small that they don't have specialized deployment engineers). I think the trade off they (=Microsoft) made here is quite reasonable (i.e. use more disk space to prevent deployment issues).
- malkia 16y ago
  That 5gb is 20gb on my vista 64 bit machine. I have tons of different 64bit, debug and release dlls. Could be from the fact that I have 3 different versions of studio installed? Anyway...it does not serve it's purpose, and only wastes user money - 20gb cost a lot on a latest SSD drive
  - contextfree 16y ago
    It's probably not really 20GB. Most of what's in WinSxS is links to files in other directories, often multiple links to the same file, and the Windows shell "Properties" dialog will include every "copy" when calculating total size.
    - malkia 16y ago
      I checked it up again: dir c:\windows\winsxs\amd64* accounts for 10829 directories dir c:\windows\winsxs\x86* accounts for 6163 directories Total 16gb. So I was wrong, 20GB came from the artist machine I was inspecting the problem. On mine is 16GB In total here is what I have: C:\Windows\winsxs>cmd /c dir /s | tail Directory of C:\Windows\winsxs\x86_wwf-system.workflow.runtime_31bf3856ad364e35_6.0.6002.18005_none_670656a59d28c52a 06/03/2009 03:34 PM <DIR> . 06/03/2009 03:34 PM <DIR> .. 02/18/2009 11:39 AM 540,672 System.Workflow.Runtime.dll 1 File(s) 540,672 bytes Total Files Listed: 70492 File(s) 17,392,399,667 bytes 54416 Dir(s) 3,145,158,656 bytes free
sid0 16y ago
No, there's a lot of hard-linking going on in there.
- malkia 16y ago
  How do you verify that?
  - sid0 16y ago
    I don't think there's an easy way to do that -- I bet you could write a fairly simple program with pywin32 to do that. But there's definitely a ton of hard-linking going on in there.

roel_v 16y ago

I think this argument is wrong. Those 5GB are of separate versions of each DLL. If program A needs version 1 of a library and programs B and C need version 2, you only have to have 2 files - those of 1 and 2. B and C can share their copy. So they do save space. Now I don't know if it saves as much as the 5GB that the different versions take. This 5 GB is because there are so many versions. You could argue that they shouldn't be all installed, and that applications should install them on-demand, but that would require major deployment issues at vendors (especially those so small that they don't have specialized deployment engineers). I think the trade off they (=Microsoft) made here is quite reasonable (i.e. use more disk space to prevent deployment issues).

malkia 16y ago
That 5gb is 20gb on my vista 64 bit machine. I have tons of different 64bit, debug and release dlls. Could be from the fact that I have 3 different versions of studio installed? Anyway...it does not serve it's purpose, and only wastes user money - 20gb cost a lot on a latest SSD drive
- contextfree 16y ago
  It's probably not really 20GB. Most of what's in WinSxS is links to files in other directories, often multiple links to the same file, and the Windows shell "Properties" dialog will include every "copy" when calculating total size.
  - malkia 16y ago
    I checked it up again: dir c:\windows\winsxs\amd64* accounts for 10829 directories dir c:\windows\winsxs\x86* accounts for 6163 directories Total 16gb. So I was wrong, 20GB came from the artist machine I was inspecting the problem. On mine is 16GB In total here is what I have: C:\Windows\winsxs>cmd /c dir /s | tail Directory of C:\Windows\winsxs\x86_wwf-system.workflow.runtime_31bf3856ad364e35_6.0.6002.18005_none_670656a59d28c52a 06/03/2009 03:34 PM <DIR> . 06/03/2009 03:34 PM <DIR> .. 02/18/2009 11:39 AM 540,672 System.Workflow.Runtime.dll 1 File(s) 540,672 bytes Total Files Listed: 70492 File(s) 17,392,399,667 bytes 54416 Dir(s) 3,145,158,656 bytes free

sid0 16y ago

No, there's a lot of hard-linking going on in there.

malkia 16y ago
How do you verify that?
- sid0 16y ago
  I don't think there's an easy way to do that -- I bet you could write a fairly simple program with pywin32 to do that. But there's definitely a ton of hard-linking going on in there.