What's the best way to package a vb6/vb.net hybrid application?

I've been working on a project for my company that's completely implemented in VB6. However, we've been transitioning small parts of it over into VB.NET (v4.0). Previously, we would simply use the 开发者_如何学编程Package and Deployment Wizard to bundle everything up into a single setup executable, but I'm not confident that it will be enough this time. If it can be helped, we'd like for the setup to check if the .NET framework is installed on the target machine and then install it if it is not, which I'm pretty sure Package and Deployment Wizard cannot do.

I've been reading up on INNO scripting since it seems an appropriate alternative for packaging both VB.NET and VB6 projects, but it has a lot of warnings about including the wrong or unnecessary dll files. I'm a complete noob and this doesn't instill a great deal of confidence in me. I don't want our customers to run our installer and have their computers crash as a direct result.

I've been doing my own research (apologies in advance if this question has already been asked, I didn't see any relevant threads), but this is all totally virgin territory for me. What tools and instructions does this site recommend for accomplishing the things that I want? Does VB.NET come with any tools for this sort of thing, or am I pretty much on my own?

---

I'd check out something like Advanced Installer It will help you package and deploy your application. You can set dependencies like .Net 4.0 that it will ensure that it is installed before your app is. There's always InstallShield, but the cost and functionality is probably overkill at this time.

Unfortunately, with all the development of better languages, better IDEs, more developer tools, it seems as if installation tools are lagging considerably.

---

Might also look at WIX. We use it for our client-installations (our app is fully .net, but it doesn't matter).

From the linked page:

The Windows Installer XML (WiX) is a toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code. The toolset supports a command line environment that developers may integrate into their build processes to build MSI and MSM setup packages.

---

UPDATE:

I decided, appropriately enough, to take a hybrid approach. I'm using inno to build the setup.exe, but inside of that setup I'm packaging the setup file that's generated by P&DW. The P&DW takes care of all the dll crap for me, we already know it works so I don't have to worry about screwing it up, and I can just focus on making all the .NET portions install properly. It is a little bit goofy having an installer run during another installer, but it's actually a pretty small compromise, considering.

Thanks for all the tips, everybody!