Is there a way to suppress duplicate merge module adding for an InstallShield 2012 project?

Question

I have a visual studio solution with > 100 projects, the majority of them are different device "interface"/adapter dll's but there are also a few common dll's and applications. All are c# projects.

All of the device adapter dll's rely on a common dll that apparently needs the MDAC 2.7.

I have an installshield 2012 standard MSI project that is responsible for packaging the applications and the device adapter dlls.

When I build the installation package, I get a message like this for each project that references this common dll.

Adding merge module 'Microsoft Data Access Components 2.7 (English)' that is a dependency of component 'projectname.Primary_output'

Since almost everything uses this common dll, this seems kind of redundant (it performs this action more than a hundred times) It also adds 15-30 seconds for each occurence to the build time.

Is there any way to stop InstallShield from trying to add this merge module with every project output? Or is there any other solution that may still work, and that reduces build time?

Answer 1

Select the component for which you do not want to include the dependency from Organization->Component. Go to right side properties part.
Under .Net Settings there is third property: .Net scan at build. Select value None or Properties only from the drop down.

This should help.