Deploy visual studio isolated shell app with chained installer

Question

Hi,

I have developed a visual studio isolated shell application. When deploying that application, I first have to make sure that the redistributables for the isolated shell are installed.

I have the exe containing the redistributables (which can be executed as quite install) and my msi file. Now I need a setup.exe which chains these installers. I found some hints via google, but non makes much sense to me. Has anybody a simple example how to solve that problem? Should not be that complicated or uncommon!?

cheers, Achim

Answer 1

If you've got the windows SDK installed then have a look at C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages. There are packages which can be added as prerequisites to a setup project in visual studio 2008. Add the isolated shell redistributable to that directory. I suggest you have a look at one of the packages and use that as an example. When selecting the prerequisites for your setup make sure that you select Download prerequisites from the same location as my application. This will cause the setup project to copy the packages required to the same directory as your installer directory. Have a look at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb685514.aspx for tip on how to get the setup to check if prerequisites are met before your setup can be installed.