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I have a Visual Studio Installer project that is configured, works fine and is ready for deployment. When I build the project, it creates a .exe file and a .msi file. I can delete the .exe file and install the app with a double click of the .msi file.

My question is: Is it acceptable to just deliver the .msi file to our customers for the installation? Why is the .exe file needed? The goal is to send them one file so they don't get confused, but I want to make sure I'm not doing something fundamentally wrong here.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

PhilDW
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nikotromus
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2 Answers2

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The setup.exe is almost always used to install prerequisites for the product, C++ runtimes, .NET, SQL etc. If you have the project then see what it says about prerequisites in the Properties of the project. For example, the app might need SQL Lite or something similar that the setup.exe will install.

PhilDW
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  • Phil, from the screenshot I added - do these projects always download the prerequisites? I have never used these projects for anything "real". – Stein Åsmul Jul 28 '18 at 02:23
  • @PhilDW In my case I will need both files as we are installing SQL Server if it is not already installed on our client's machines. – nikotromus Jul 28 '18 at 22:55
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Just to add to what Phil has already explained well, maybe a couple of screen shots can help? But before that: I am not aware of anything else that this setup.exe does apart from installing (potentially downloading) prerequisites.

If your MSI is for corporate distribution I can guarantee you that they will prefer the MSI over the setup.exe file. A great deal of time is often spent removing the installation of prerequisites that are already on the corporate SOE machines. Very often the prerequisites that the setup.exe installs are outdated, and they are just nuisances.

For what it is worth a lot of people end up switching to other solutions than these projects because they are too limited for future use. Different MSI tools to use.

The pre-requisites installed by the setup.exe is defined in the Visual Studio Setup Project Properties.

Now you can see the list of pre-requisites that are defined to be installed by the setup.exe. Note that you can uncheck the "Create setup program to install prerequisite components" option on top of the dialog.

Prerequisites

Stein Åsmul
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