Bootstrapper: How to compile the application and prerequisite in single .msi package?

Question

I am creating an .msi package for the application which has a prerequisite for installation. I am using the Visual Studio 2005 Bootstrapper for this task. To this end, I did the following: Located the folder C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\ and created a folder for my prerequisite (made it same structure as 'dotnetfx'); created the 'product.xml' and 'package.xml' and placed them appropriately. I kept the xml files very simple so far to test the installation:

product.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Product ProductCode="MyPrereq" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/2004/01/bootstrapper">
  <PackageFiles CopyAllPackageFiles="false">
    <PackageFile Name="MyPrereq.exe" />
  </PackageFiles>
  <InstallChecks>
  </InstallChecks>
  <Commands Reboot="None">
    <Command PackageFile="MyPrereq.exe" EstimatedInstallSeconds="90">
      <InstallConditions>
      </InstallConditions>
      <ExitCodes>
    <ExitCode Value="0" Result="Success"/>
        <DefaultExitCode Result="Fail" String="GeneralFailure" FormatMessageFromSystem="true" />
      </ExitCodes>
    </Command>
  </Commands>
</Product>

package.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Package Name="MyPrereq" Culture="Culture" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/2004/01/bootstrapper">
  <Strings>
    <String Name="Culture">en</String>
    <String Name="DisplayName">MyPrereq</String>
    <String Name="GeneralFailure">A fatal error occurred. The installation failed.</String>
  </Strings>
</Package>

Now I can add the prerequisite from the list and build my setup project.

The problem:

The build output is the 'setup.exe', the 'MyApp.msi' package, plus the subfolder called 'MyPrereq' which contains 'MyPrereq.exe'.

I would like the build to create a 'setup.exe' and a single 'MyApp.msi', which would contain the 'MyPrereq' inside, with no additional files/directories.

I know that the .NET framework is another prereq for my app, and it is included in the same .msi, so that should be possible somehow.

How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

You can create a self-extracting installer with tools such as IExpress (coming with Windows) containing all files in a single executable (see this SO posting).

You cannot have an MSI file installing its own pre-requisites. First, because Windows Installer itself is a pre-requisite (and must be installed by a non MSI exe) and second because Windows Installer installations are transactional and don't support the chained execution of MSI files. This basically means that one MSI installation cannot start another MSI installation. As a consequence, any pre-requisites must be installed by a separate bootstrapper (by the way, the installation is no longer transactional - the pre-requisites won't get uninstalled if your MSI installation fails).

There seems to be a basic mis-understanding about the bootstrapper mechanism though. The bootstrapper can currently only be generated by Visual Studio or MSBuild. Afaik it is not possible with WiX. Look for the GenerateBootstrapper task in MSBuild (see this SO posting).

Answer 2

I managed to do that with IExpress.

Had to use a small trick, however, which is described here Creating a bootstrapper for a VS Shell application

Unfortunately, the MSBuild task doesn't provide the option to have the configuration resource use prerequisite installers found in the target directory, so you must manually update the appropriate resource file to remove the hard-coded path that looks for prerequisites in a sub-directory of the same name.

Open the Setup.exe program in Visual Studio's resource editor

Double-click the resource named, SETUPCFG in the 41 folder

Search for the "Vs Shell\" string and delete the two occurrences that appear

Save the resource file and the Setup.exe executable will be updated automatically

Run iexpress

Create a new package by following the IExpress wizard's steps and make sure to include the following files:

The MyVSShellApplication.msi file

The Setup.exe bootstrapper file

The vs_shell_isolated.enu.exe file

The problem was that bootstrapper puts the prerequisites into a subfolder, and IExpress does not recognise subfolders. Have to be careful while editing 'setup.exe' too, didn't get it correct on the first try.