how to create installer inside another installer?

Question

Hello everyone,

I want to create a Windows Installer, the 1st step I want it to call another installer (will install dependent components of my application), and the 2nd step I want to install my own application. I want to do all tasks in one installation process, and I have the dependent component installation package at hand (an exe file).

Any good tools or samples to refer to? I prefer to use VSTS or Microsoft or open source easy to use tools. :-)

thanks in advance, George

Answer 1

Update: It seems that nesting MSI installation is somewhat possible. However it requires some tweaking using tools from the Windows Installer SDK and has a number of drawbacks.

The following article has the details:

How to create a nested .msi package

Microsoft recommends not to use this feature (see this related answer and point 20 in this list).

However, you might also want to look at different install systems such as NSIS or create a bootstrapper that installs the dependencies prior to setup.

Answer 2

You could look at Inno Setup. It creates exe installers, as opposed to MSIs. It has a pascal-based scripting language, so is pretty flexible.

It's free and pretty easy to use.

If your existing installer doesn't use the MSI technology, you could use WiX to create an MSI and launch the existing installer via a custom action. I've done this in the past.

WiX is open source.

Answer 3

yes it would be very easy if you do it using Inno Setup, but with a slight difference..

You will have to perform step 2 first and then step 1.

Try using AutoHotkey(scripting) for checking the existence of any process in the background that verifies the installation of a particular software.

Answer 4

You might want to take a look at the Microsoft Bootstrapper, assuming the dependent components are libraries such as .NET or similar then it's fairly straightforward.

If you want to create a Windows Installer (MSI) package then take a look at Windows Installer XML (WiX). But you'll want to get your head around how MSI works first. WiX is really simple once you understand Windows Installer, but trying to learn both at once can be rather confusing.

For a basic, copy some files, extract/run some stuff, type installer then NSIS is fairly straightforward scripting and you can pick that up in a day or so.

Answer 5

Check out iexpress on windows systems. In just a few minutes you can create an installer that can call as many installers as you like.

Answer 6

Nsis with this modification.