Im trying to update from 4.8.1 to the latest version (4.8.3?) and the update protocol seems to check if i have a full 14 gb of space (the total size of the engine) rather than just the space required for the changed/new files. This wouldnt really be a problem if my HDD wasnt so full but since it is I am essentially forced to completely delete unreal then redownload the full 14 gb; this is the second time ive had to do it this way and it is obviously inefficient and just generally annoying.
So my question is why does it work that way and can it please be changed?
No one cares to address my question? Cause this is really really annoying and ive had to do it again; the problem gets even worse since deleting unreal only frees up 9gb of space but the installer asks for 14.
Sorry this dropped off the radar! I can see that this is frustrating - and you are right; it would be better the update only required the drive space needed for any files that have changed plus what is new.
As for why the update currently works this way, our tech is based on a patching system we originally wrote for internal games testing. When considering this case, a UE4 game that is shippable is made up of one large pak file, plus a small amount of binaries. This essentially means that the drive space required for any update is going to be at least the size of the pak file, which is most of the whole installation. The different logic for calculating the size required for specific files has simply not been added to the system yet.
In terms of an editor update, on investigating the improvement you would gain with correcting this update logic, say you had 4.8.0 installed, and updated to 4.8.1, well, pretty much all of the binaries, pdbs, libs etc have changed. The disk space ask would be around 11.2GB. I suspect that wouldn’t really help you that much.
I will make sure that this work is logged in our road map and addressed at some point given that it makes a difference, however, there are other features and improvements coming that will likely help you much more than this. In addition to other internal developments, I am particularly looking forward to improvements in VS 2015 when this can be rolled out, such as dramatically reducing the size of pdb files.
The difference between the 14GB and 9GB that you report I believe to be the difference between actual file size, and final size after applying NTFS compression to some of the installation files (e.g. pdbs, libs).
As for what you can do, if you are not able to free space on the installation drive, I think your only options for now are to continue as you are or look to reinstall the Launcher on a drive that has a lot more space available.
Thanks for taking the time to consider my issues and answer in so much detail; I truly appreciate understanding the reasoning. I suppose ill just free some space and look forward to those updates.