How to run multiple msi files

For my application, I need to install the main application and allow users to pick and choose one or more additional features to install. I tried to run the main msi and have a custom action to install other feature msi files. How开发者_开发问答ever, it doesn't work since MSI doesn't support nested installation. Should I build a window application and give the users the choices and internally call msi files sequentially? The additional msi files are custom applications that we built. They are not pre-requisites. We separated these features into different msi files because we want to make changes to the features msi files without recompile the main msi file. Please help!

Thank you. Amy Pham

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I think the short answer is that you can't do what you described using an MSI. Since Windows Installer only allows a single MSI to be installing at a time, you may need to write a non-MSI application that can present a UI, and install the MSIs sequentially based on the user's choices. You can use the MSIs as external resources if you don't want to compile them into your main setup program.

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As MSI does not support nested installations (yet) you will have to create a so-called bootstrapper. This is a separate .exe file normally named setup.exe. The purpose of this exe is to (download and) install the pre-requisites of your MSI before your MSI is launched.

A bootstrapper can e.g. be generated using Visual Studio.

See this related question:

How to create installer inside another installer?