create single click msi file of custom installer o

Question

I have an application for which I have created a custom installer. Now this installer have some supported files and exe. This also contains a folder with set of exe and supported dll's of my application.

Now if user have to install my application he can run that installer exe and can install it.

Now What I want is convert that whole thing into a single msi file, so that I can put it on my website and users can download it. So it will become like single click install stuff.

All stuff builded in .NET

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Answer 1

You could take a look at the Repackager from Advanced Installer. However, this requires the Enterprise edition, you cannot use it in the free version of Advanced Installer, but you do get a 30 days trial period to test it, with full features support. Also, there was recently released a single-click install support that you might be interested in.

Answer 2

What I ususally do to deploy my applications is to build an NSIS setup. This is no MSI though, but in most of the cases it was absolutely sufficent for my needs.

If I need to install prerequisited like the .NET Framework, I used the bootstrapper dotNetInstaller which included the NSIS setup as well as the .NET Framework. It starts, installs .NET (if not present) and then executes the actual NSIS setup.

Last, I absolutely was in the need for MSI, I switched to Wix and Wix# ("Wix Sharp"). You could also create a setup project in Visual Studio .NET 2010 and let it build an MSI package for you; usually they provided too few customization options for me so I used Wix instead.