GAC an assembly without embedding it within the MSI

Question

I want to GAC an assembly already present on target machines, I know where this assembly is on every machine (you can assume, that path is static for all target machines and wont change and that I am the owner of this assembly) I do not want to include the assembly to be GAC'd in the MSI since it can change with each solution deployment and we dont want our setup to be modified each time. I tried using the <File> tag with Assembly =".net"

<File 
    Id="Assembly.dll"
    Name="Assembly.dll"
    Assembly=".net" 
    Source="Assembly.dll"
    KeyPath="yes" >
 </File>

but using File embeds my assembly in the MSI. Any ideas on how to just tell the MSI to just look for the assembly in a particular location and not include it?

Answer 1

That's not supported by the Windows Installer. It isn't immediately clear why you would want to take someone else's file and put into the GAC (if it was your file, why not put it in the GAC to begin with?). :)

Answer 2

Seems like an odd request, but the way to do this would be to write a script / batch file to GAC the file. Test this out by itself without the MSI. Once working, include the script in the MSI, and then execute the script as a custom action to execute on install. You would also want to remove it from the GAC on uninstall.

If you are using a Visual Studio setup project, right click on the project, and choose View->Custom Actions. From there it will let you add the actions for the appropriate events (install, uninstall, etc).