I need to create a Windows 6.1 mobile installer that will install a small C# application. The installer also needs to be able to copy a .properties file into the installation directory. Any ideas on what the best way to do this would be?
I suspect that Visual Studio 2008 supports this but is there any other way? Do any open source Windows Mobile installer projects exist?
You don't seem to mention it outright, but it sounds like you want to produce an installable CAB, yes?
You could theoretically use any utility that creates CABs, however you need to generate a *.000 file, which is binary metadata that WM pulls from the CAB. As far as I know the VS tools are the only tools that do this.
The VS UI for this is to add a "Smart Device CAB" project to your solution.
If you don't like the Visual Studio UI to create such a cab (frankly I don't either), you can write an inf installer file and use the cabwiz.exe tool to generate a CAB. This is included with VS. There seem to be useful hints at this google search.