Thanks for the breakdown on the 4GB limit and how the SFX stubs handle external archives—that makes complete sense why keeping them separate (setup1.exe + setup1.arc) is the way to go.
To tackle the lack of a native batch mode in the GUI, I’ve been experimenting with a completely hands-off automated approach using a custom PowerShell script. Since I'm aiming for a fully automated pipeline, my script handles things end-to-end: it scans a source directory, groups multi-region variants together so SREP deduplication can process shared assets across builds, dynamically compiles the complex masked compression command string into a temporary batch file, executes FreeArc, and finally triggers Inno Setup to build the companion installer stub right next to the .arc archive.
To be clear, I'm not looking to build any fancy installers or complex setup menus. I literally just want a reliable way to unpack and extract the archive whenever I need it later. From what I understand, because of Mini Compressor's advanced masked compression chain, extraction must be driven through some kind of compiled executable wrapper and cannot be done via a standard right-click "extract here" tool. Is that correct?
While most of my projects have processed and extracted smoothly using this method, I’ve hit one snag on a larger build (an 18GB source ISO compressed down to 13.8GB). This file consistently errors out when extracting at 90.60% every single time at the exact same spot.
Does anyone have any suggestions on what might cause an archive to choke right near the very end like that? Could it be a memory/dictionary allocation limit during extraction, or something that happened during the compression pass? Any advice would be huge!
I'm now in the process of compressing again, this time with a very slight change in the command chain.
the command below is what my script passes over to fa.bat and is from the first run that caused an error with one output project (the other 14 tests are all okay). The second command below is the new tweaked command chain, as maybe the first one was too aggressive perhaps.
Code:
@echo off
title Mini Compressor - Compressing...
"..\Compression\FreeArc\Arc.exe" a -ma9 -ds -di -i1 -ep1 -ed -r -s; -w_Temp\ -lc10240 -ld10240 -mxprecomp+srep:m3f:a2+dispack070+lolz:dtb1:d192m:mtt1:mt4:mc1023/`$bitmapz=msc+grzip:128mb:m2:l2048:h15:a:t1/`$bink=bpk+srep:m3f:a1:mem1024mb+tor:7/`$void=srep:m3f:a2:mem1024mb+tor:7/`$photo=lepton/`$ogg=oggre/`$wavz=halac/`$mp3=mpz/`$pngz=precomp+srep:m3f:a2+dispack070+lzma2:d128m:mt2 "$OutputPath" "$SourcePath"
exit /b %errorlevel%
"@
Code:
@echo off
title Mini Compressor - Compressing...
"..\Compression\FreeArc\Arc.exe" a -ma9 -ds -di -i1 -ep1 -ed -r -s; -w_Temp\ -lc4096 -ld4096 -mxprecomp+srep:m3f:a2+dispack+lolz:d128m:mt2:mc1023/`$bitmapz=msc+grzip:128mb:m2:l2048:h15:a:t1/`$bink=bpk+srep:m3f:a1:mem512mb+tor:7/`$void=srep:m3f:a2:mem512mb+tor:7/`$photo=lepton/`$ogg=oggre/`$wavz=halac/`$mp3=mpz/`$pngz=precomp+srep:m3f:a2+dispack+lzma2:d64m:mt2 "$OutputPath" "$SourcePath"
exit /b %errorlevel%
"@