Install an MSP as a prerequisite

[tobyteel]

Hey:

I have a .MSP that I need to install as a prerequisite. It's Visual Studio Tools for Office 3.0 SP1.

What is the MSICode to apply a .MSP? Should I use "Run Program msiexec /update"?

If I am installing the original Visual Studio Tools for Office, I realize I can add a PATCH= property to the (Un)Install MSI command. But the user may already have VSTO 3.0 RTM installed, and only need the patch. (I suppose I could uninstall the RTM version and reinstall both...)

A little help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

-Toby

[tobyteel]

So I wound up using msiexec to install the patch (not ideal, since progress can't be tracked) but it's ok.

One thing I want to point out though:

msiexec (for me at least) constantly returned 1636 (ERROR_PATCH_PACKAGE_INVALID - This patch package could not be opened. Contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer patch package.) while I was testing. This is a little bit erroneous: This message is returned by msiexec when it can't find the patch file. So be sure to check that the patch exists before running msiexec (it will make debugging easier).

A list of msiexec return codes:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/229683

If anyone does come up with a way to install patches without using msiexec I'd love to hear about it; msiexec was a headache.

[giaviv]

Dear toybeel,

(Un) Install MSI Setup works just like msiexec.exe in terms of parameters - every parameter that you can pass to msiexec.exe, the plug-in should be able to process.
Hence, using /p in the action string would yield the same results as calling msiexec.exe /p.

Thanks!