Visual Studio Setup & Deployment: Adding Pre Requisits

Answer 1

Those projects are simply wrappers around wix. You can always drop down to Wix and edit the files directly.
Awesome guide

Launch Conditions

Answer 2

Have a look at the article

Authoring a Custom Bootstrapper Package for Visual Studio 2005

If you locate a folder C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages (VS 2005) or, for VS 2008, C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages

Each folder under 'Packages' is the prerequisite you see in the list, as shown on your screenshot.

So, if you want to add an application called MyPrereq as a prerequisite, you need to make your own folder 'MyPrereq' under 'Packages'. Then you make a product.xml file similar to this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Product ProductCode="MyPrereq" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/2004/01/bootstrapper"&gt;
  <PackageFiles CopyAllPackageFiles="false">
    <PackageFile Name="MyPrereq.exe" />
  </PackageFiles>
  <InstallChecks>
  </InstallChecks>
  <Commands Reboot="None">
    <Command PackageFile="MyPrereq.exe" EstimatedInstallSeconds="90">
      <InstallConditions>
      </InstallConditions>
      <ExitCodes>
    <ExitCode Value="0" Result="Success"/>
        <DefaultExitCode Result="Fail" String="GeneralFailure" FormatMessageFromSystem="true" />
      </ExitCodes>
    </Command>
  </Commands>
</Product>

and your package.xml file similar to this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Package Name="MyPrereq" Culture="Culture" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/2004/01/bootstrapper"&gt;
  <Strings>
    <String Name="Culture">en</String>
    <String Name="DisplayName">MyPrereq</String>
    <String Name="GeneralFailure">A fatal error occurred. The installation failed.</String>
  </Strings>
</Package>

and place these files and your setup package (MyPrereq.exe) in the folder. Check the existing packages as an example to see where to place files.

If you do everything properly, you will be able to see your MyPrereq option in the list of "Choose which prerequisites to install".

Answer 3

hey thank you very much. Awesome. It helped me big time