How to package an off the shelf .net application that ships with custom code

Question

We have an off the shelf application with hooks built in to handle customer specific needs.

The custom code uses the same core libraries as our standard application.

Our current process is ship the standard app via an MSI and then separately send along the custom dll.

How is this typically handled?

1. create a setup project for each customer with the custom dll included with the main app(this seems unmaintainable)
2. keep sending the standard msi and send the dll separately (this has already proven to be terrible idea)
3. send the standard msi in addition to a custom code msi
4. other

Answer 1

If I'm understanding your question, you have one part of the application that is common to all users, and another part of the application that is custom-made for each user?

If that's the case, you should consider implementing the common part of the application as a Merge Module. Then, you create the custom part as an MSI and include the merge module inside. This would make the common part much easier to manage.

MSDN article on merge modules

Answer 2

See this question, our requirement was to embed custom configuration files in the MSI.

You should be able to modify this fairly easily so you have a "standard" MSI, and then ship an MST+CAB file containing the custom code. MST files are already familiar to administrators deploying applications over a network, if your customers generally double-click to install then you'll want to include a batch file or instructions on how to install with a transform.. e.g:

msiexec.exe /i setup.msi TRANSFORMS=test.mst