title: Reusing WIX components to speed up candle/light
body: <p>I am fairly new to WIX, so forgive me if I'm completly missing the boat here, but I was wondering if it was possible to reuse components (mwm,cab,etc) from within a wxs file without having light re-link them every time.  The installer I'm working on has several executables, dlls and config files that tend to change between each install.  These files amount to about 5 meg worth of installer.  The part I want to reuse is the ~350 meg worth of image/map/database files that do not change very often that I don't want to necessarilly have to compile/link every time the installer is built.</p>
  
  <p>I've tried creating a mwm file for the maps, but when I reference them within the wxs, they get linked via light into the main .msi file.  I've tried specifing a non embedded CAB file to hold the maps:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;Media Id="1" Cabinet="media1.cab" EmbedCab="yes" /&gt;
  &lt;Media Id="2" Cabinet="NewRiver.cab" EmbedCab="no" CompressionLevel="none" /&gt;
  ...
  &lt;Merge Id="NewRiverDigMap" SourceFile="..\Output\NewRiverDigitalMaps.msm" Language="1033" DiskId="2" /&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But every time light runs, the stand-alone CAB file gets regenerated - which takes a while.</p>
  
  <p>I thought about just creating a ZIP file to deliver along with the msi and have the installer just kick off the zip extract, but that seems anti-wix to me.  I'd like to have the files be removed when they are no longer needed.</p>
  
  <p>Are there any other wix like operations that I'm missing?  I've read about fragments, but that doesn't seem to be what I'm looking for.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks,
  David</p>