Installation Package: How can I build single exe for installing a package?

Question

I have created a package which contains following files to install a package.

setup.exe
mySetup.msi (package installer)
WindowsInstaller31.msi (Prerequisite 1)
NetFramework35.exe (Prerequisite 2)

When user click on setup.exe the this package runs and first check for prerequisites if they do no found on system then it first install prerequisite and then continue setup for actual product.

My problem is that I want to create single exe file in which all the above files will be zipped and when user will click on this single exe then will extract all these files and setup will continue.

I would like to distribute single exe to my client instead of these 4 files.

Can any one help me to create a single self extract exe file for my package?

have you looked into NSIS? also, are you sure there aren't legal problems redistributing the Microsoft files? — jcomeau_ictx, Jun 15 '11 at 06:44
@ jcomeau_ictx - Considering that the Publish option in Visual Studio sticks the Microsoft files with the installer, wouldn't it be safe to assume that there's no legal problems? — William Lawn Stewart, Jun 15 '11 at 06:56

William Lawn Stewart · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-15T06:51:45.003

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There's a wide variety of applications out there that can do this for you.

Here's a few:

edited Jun 15 '11 at 06:51

answered Jun 15 '11 at 06:44

William Lawn Stewart

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Yeah, I've heard good things about it. There's heaps of them, but I can't seem to think of more. Google to the rescue! – William Lawn Stewart Jun 15 '11 at 06:49

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:34

The free, open-source project WIX (Windows Installer XML) - which was originally a Microsoft product, but is now open sourced via Outercurve Foundation - has a feature for this called the Bootstrapper application burn.exe. The SDK can be found at CodePlex.

Though more involved than other bootstrappers to deal with due to the XML format, it is the bootstrapper I would chose due to the reliability of the WIX framework as a whole. I do not have any sample scripts for you, but there is documentation here: http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/manual/v3/bundle/

Wix author and former Microsoft employee Rob Mensching blogs about Burn: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2009/7/14/lets-talk-about-burn . And here is a sample showing how to install the dotnet framework: How To: Install the .NET Framework Using Burn

Here is another thread on the same issue: Generating an executable using wix

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 09 '14 at 11:33

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take a look at free version of actual installer

edited Mar 09 '14 at 11:33

zmo

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answered Mar 09 '14 at 11:06

mike

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Care to elaborate. Link only answers are discouraged on StackOverflow – zoranc Mar 09 '14 at 11:30
how do you use it, and what your link is all about? – zmo Mar 09 '14 at 11:34

Installation Package: How can I build single exe for installing a package?

3 Answers3