Bootstrapper: How to compile the application and prerequisite in single .msi package? - visual-studio-2005

Question

I am creating an .msi package for the application which has a prerequisite for installation.
I am using the Visual Studio 2005 Bootstrapper for this task.
To this end, I did the following:
Located the folder C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\ and created a folder for my prerequisite (made it same structure as 'dotnetfx'); created the 'product.xml' and 'package.xml' and placed them appropriately. I kept the xml files very simple so far to test the installation:
product.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Product ProductCode="MyPrereq" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/2004/01/bootstrapper">
<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>
package.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Package Name="MyPrereq" Culture="Culture" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/2004/01/bootstrapper">
<Strings>
<String Name="Culture">en</String>
<String Name="DisplayName">MyPrereq</String>
<String Name="GeneralFailure">A fatal error occurred. The installation failed.</String>
</Strings>
</Package>
Now I can add the prerequisite from the list and build my setup project.
The problem:
The build output is the 'setup.exe', the 'MyApp.msi' package, plus the subfolder called 'MyPrereq' which contains 'MyPrereq.exe'.
I would like the build to create a 'setup.exe' and a single 'MyApp.msi', which would contain the 'MyPrereq' inside, with no additional files/directories.
I know that the .NET framework is another prereq for my app, and it is included in the same .msi, so that should be possible somehow.
How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

You can create a self-extracting installer with tools such as IExpress (coming with Windows) containing all files in a single executable (see this SO posting).
You cannot have an MSI file installing its own pre-requisites. First, because Windows Installer itself is a pre-requisite (and must be installed by a non MSI exe) and second because Windows Installer installations are transactional and don't support the chained execution of MSI files. This basically means that one MSI installation cannot start another MSI installation. As a consequence, any pre-requisites must be installed by a separate bootstrapper (by the way, the installation is no longer transactional - the pre-requisites won't get uninstalled if your MSI installation fails).
There seems to be a basic mis-understanding about the bootstrapper mechanism though. The bootstrapper can currently only be generated by Visual Studio or MSBuild. Afaik it is not possible with WiX. Look for the GenerateBootstrapper task in MSBuild (see this SO posting).

Answer 2

I managed to do that with IExpress.
Had to use a small trick, however, which is described here
Creating a bootstrapper for a VS Shell application
Unfortunately, the MSBuild task
doesn't provide the option to have the
configuration resource use
prerequisite installers found in the
target directory, so you must manually
update the appropriate resource file
to remove the hard-coded path that
looks for prerequisites in a
sub-directory of the same name.
Open the Setup.exe program in Visual
Studio's resource editor
Double-click
the resource named, SETUPCFG in the 41
folder
Search for the "Vs Shell\"
string and delete the two occurrences
that appear
Save the resource file
and the Setup.exe executable will be
updated automatically
Run iexpress
Create a new package by following the
IExpress wizard's steps and make sure
to include the following files: The
MyVSShellApplication.msi file The
Setup.exe bootstrapper file The
vs_shell_isolated.enu.exe file
The problem was that bootstrapper puts the prerequisites into a subfolder, and IExpress does not recognise subfolders. Have to be careful while editing 'setup.exe' too, didn't get it correct on the first try.