I've been tasked with building an msi installer for our custom project in Visual Studio 2005. In addition to installing the dlls we build from our code, it has to install a bunch of extra files (configuration, templates, scripts, stuff like that) that are stored in our version control system. The directory structure in version control mirrors the desired output structure.
So, I'd like to be able to simply point something in the installer File System at the root directory containing our extra files (and subdirectories with more extra files) and have it pick up everything in that directory tree and add it to the output msi.
I know I could add each file one at a time, but:
- There are a lot of them
- Changes to the contents of these directories are still in progress, and I want the msi to pick up any changes automatically when we rebuild from source control
Can this be done with the msi tools in Visual Studio 2005? My choice of tools has been dictated by the client, so solutions involving other msi tools like InstallShield or WiX are not viable.