WinDbg installer: redundant intermediate disk extraction and no feedback during temp cleanup
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- Dominant language
- C++
- Stars
- 331
- Forks
- 33
- PR merge metrics
- No merged PRs in 30d
Description
Summary
The WinDbg/TTD installer used a hand-rolled ZIP/inflate parser and materialized a large intermediate file to disk, so the install appeared to hang on the "Verifying installation..." step.
Background
For a current WinDbg package the installer touched roughly 1.9 GB of temporary disk I/O. The inner windbg_win-x64.msix (381 MB) was written to a temp file only to be reopened and read straight back, then deleted.
Symptom: "Verifying installation..." appears stuck
CheckInstallation() itself is instant (six fs::exists checks). The perceived hang was the CleanupTempFiles() call that ran right after it. Measured: deleting the freshly-written 381 MB inner .msix took ~68 s — not because the raw delete is slow (that's ~85 ms) but because antivirus scans the just-written archive synchronously on delete.
Resolution (landed in #1128)
- Replaced the homegrown ZIP/inflate parser (
vendor/minizip-ng, ~45 KB of bespoke code — despite the name, not upstream minizip-ng) with the vendored, well-audited miniz amalgamation. Also removes a bespoke parser from a supply-chain-sensitive path and fixes the old reader's 2 GB (long) offset limit. - Extract the inner package directly from memory (
mz_zip_reader_init_mem) into the install dir — no intermediate.msixfile is written or later deleted. - Gave the cleanup step its own progress message.
Measured (real 1.13 GB package): whole install ~87 s → ~17 s; cleanup ~68 s → 0 ms (nothing to delete). The remaining ~17 s is the actual writing of 1446 payload files.
Follow-up (not in #1128)
In the real download path the 1.13 GB .msixbundle itself is still deleted at the end and could hit the same antivirus scan-on-delete cost. Worth measuring separately; the inner-package temp (the ~68 s case) is resolved.
Contributor guide
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First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
The main issue says the fix landed in #1128, including direct in-memory extraction and progress feedback. Read that change first, then measure deletion of the outer .msixbundle in the real download path; done means determining whether antivirus scanning still causes a significant delay and documenting the result or follow-up scope.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- cpp
- Domain
- tooling
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 3/5
- Estimated time
- 1-2 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Newbie friendliness
- 20/100