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Asked: 2026-05-18T12:31:03+00:00

Greetings! I have a solution in VS2010 that defines 3-4 individual applications. These 3-4

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Greetings!

I have a solution in VS2010 that defines 3-4 individual applications.

These 3-4 apps are individual (but related) components that I need to have individually installed on our production servers during deployment. I toyed with using WIX mondo to generate a multi-feature WIX installer, but found that it would be more beneficial to allow that these applications be able to be installed individually as well as via a single-source for all of them, preferably configurable to choose which to install during an installation.

I noticed that there is a WIX project type called “Bootstrapper Project” but I cannot find much documentation around it on the web, and do not know if it is a project type that will actually assist me in creating a deployment installation bootstrapper for my projects. (i.e. a setup.exe file that will install, one after the other, each project as either defined in the installer, or optionally selectable via the installer as it runs)…

what is the best method to do this within WIX, using pre-existing WIX installers for individual programs?

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  1. Editorial Team

    In Wix, the support to create a bootstrapper is through a tool called “Burn”. Burn has been pushed out to v4.0 (or version 3.6). So that isn’t much help.

    You can use an open source tool like dotNetInstaller: http://dotnetinstaller.codeplex.com/

    Here is an overview on how to create a setup installer that checks for the .NET Framework (which in and of itself is not very useful, but shows you how to work with dotNetInstaller):
    http://www.lostechies.com/blogs/gabrielschenker/archive/2010/05/19/creating-a-bootstrapper-with-dotnetinstaller.aspx

    Or you can follow the instructions here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms165429(v=VS.100).aspx

    And use the Bootstrapper Manifest Generator here (although there appear to be 64-bit issues): http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/bmg

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