Hi

Some parts of our application are very customer/user specific. For example, 
there will be a varying number of files in the appData-folder depending on the 
installation. The approach i have used so far is having a custom action copying 
these files. .
An example installation package could look like this. It is important the the 
msi and the other files reside in the same folder!

Application.msi
FOLDER_WITH_USER_SPECIFIC_FILES           (These files change per customer, 
impossible to compile them into the msi)

Via the SourceDir Property I then manage to copy the files into the desired 
folder. This works well so far, although I am not entirely happy about it as 
the declarative approach of windows installer is undermined. However, with my 
limited wix knowledge, this is the only solution a can see.

Unfortunately, our application has some prerequisites (.NET framework, crystal 
reports...) and therefore needs to have a bootstraper containing all 
prerequisites and the msi file, that takes care of installing them. The 
bootstrapper i have tried (dotNetInstaller), copies the msi to a temp folder 
and as a consequence, the msi and the installation-specific files no longer 
reside in the same folder. The SourceDir points then to the wrong directory and 
the the user specific files cannot be copied.


My questions are now:

- Are there any better, well-proven approaches, that stick to the msi 
declarative approach
- Is there a solution to the bootstrapper problem? Are there (free) 
bootstrappers, that embedd all files and trigger the msi installation with the 
SourceDir property pointing to the directory of the bootstrapper? It would then 
look like this:

Bootstrapper.exe
FOLDER_WITH_USER_SPECIFIC_FILES           (These files change per customer, 
impossible to compile them into the msi, or Bootstrapper)

Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Dan

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