Visual Studio 10 Application .exe and .msi in a single file

1
votes

we are currently developing an application using Visual Studio 10 in C#. After creating the setup project (Wizard) and building it we come up with two files: respectively msi and exe.

In synthesis I've read that the .exe file is a "wrap file" since it wraps the .msi file and basically after checking for the prerequisites it runs the .msi file. What we want is to deploy the application in a single file that both checks for prerequisites (we expecially need to install sql server compact 4.0, but it works just fine if we run the exe file) and installs them if they aren't available and installs the application itself as well (with the files included in the msi), because it makes it easier to distribute and more "user friendly".

Do you know any simple solution to achieve that?

Thank you guys in advance for the reply.

1
c#filedeploymentwindows-installerexe
What's wrong with distributing both files and just having the user click on the EXE? Like every other application. Nothing unfriendly about that. – Cody Gray♦
What kind of setup project? Have you investigated WiX? WiX has the capability you describe, but it does mean a learning curve. – JohnL

1 Answers

1
votes

The most simple solution would be using a selfextracting .exe tool. IEXPRESS.exe is already included in Windows. There are of course some with more features.