Visual studio deployment with third party setups

Question

I have a created setup project in visual studio. The setup runs fine on client's machine and application run fine after installation is complete.

I have to include couple of third party setup files in my deployment package. My application is dependent on some of their features.

How can I include setups files in my deployment project and let them install themselves one after the other once my application's installation is over...

Any help will be appreciated! Thank you...

Answer 1

Installing thrid party prerequisite MSI through windows installer

Best approach to handle this requirement is to create a Bootstrapper package and add thrid party package as a prerequisite for the main application installer. First you have to install the bootstrapper manifest generater tool from the link i have provided below. Tool will autogenerate necessary manifest files. You have to copy these files to the following folder(Visual Studio2010) C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages.

Once thats done go to You Application deployment project > Properties > Prerequisite There you will see your thrid party package as one of the prerequisite option. Just select that and create the MSI. Now when you run the Setup.exe of your application it will first check if the third party package is installed in the target machine if so it will directly install your application otherwise it will first install the prerequisite component and then install your application.

MSDN: The bootstrapper first detects whether any of the prerequisites are already installed. If prerequisites are not installed, the installation begins for the prerequisites. Otherwise, if all the prerequisites are detected, the bootstrapper just starts the application installer.

• Creating Bootstrapper Packages

• Bootstrapper Manifest Generator