WIX: Installing a Redistributable Upon Feature Selection

Question

I have a unique situation that I'm trying to figure out the best solution for and best practices. I'm new to Wix, so hopefully someone can give some guidance.

Right now, I'm building an installer (shocking, I know) that has optional components. If you install the optional components, we want to be able to install an optional redistributable MSI. I realize that you're not really capable of running an optional redistributable MSI from within an existing MSI, from what I've read.

So -- that leaves me with two options -- bootstrapper or module merge. Ideally, it would be better to do something like, if they select an optional feature, it will do a post-install MSI install -- so kind of the opposite of a bootstrapper.

Can anyone provide any guidance for this? Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

The installation experience is best when you collect all the information from the user first.

That said, my preference would be to use the WiX bootstrapper, and then you can conditionally install your packages based on user input. Or if you have optional features in your msi, you can turn them on or off via properties that you pass to your msi from your bootstrapper.