custom action dll in managed code

Question

How can I call a custom action dll written in managed code (.net) from an installer without using an unmanaged intermediary?

Answer 1

The answer to your question depends on how your are authoring your installer.

For Visual Studio setup projects, create an installer class in one of your deployed assemblies. This is covered in the MSDN documentation, eg http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/d9k65z2d(VS.80).aspx

For Wix projects, you can use DTF to build managed custom actions which have complete access to the contents of the MSI. Wix is available at http://wix.sourceforge.net/.