The application I need to build an .msi for has application, driver, and service pieces. The installation must also involve a reboot. I've got most of the project working by using "custom actions" for the service and driver pieces. Windows installer documentation seems to indicate that it can deal with the service and reboot easily, but I don't see how to do this through the VS 2005 setup project.

Do I have to use custom actions for all this?

Windows Installer can install services with its built-in functionality, butVisual Studio setup projects don't provide IDE support for that, so you use custom actions with installer classes instead.

There's also a standard action ScheduleReboot that you can add to the install execute sequence wit a condition of 1 to cause the install to prompt for a reboot at the end, but that's not supported either, so you'd need to use Orca to edit the MSI file.

Looking at the Windows Installer documentation won't help in many cases because Visual Studio setup projects don't have IDE support for many of its capabilities.

Windows Installer can install services with its built-in functionality, butVisual Studio setup projects don't provide IDE support for that, so you use custom actions with installer classes instead.

There's also a standard action ScheduleReboot that you can add to the install execute sequence wit a condition of 1 to cause the install to prompt for a reboot at the end, but that's not supported either, so you'd need to use Orca to edit the MSI file.

Looking at the Windows Installer documentation won't help in many cases because Visual Studio setup projects don't have IDE support for many of its capabilities.

I've generally got some custom actions and Orca working, but I'm trying to convert over a few more things from an old InstallShield script (Setup.rul). Does converting some snippets of Setup.rul to .vbs custom actions seem reasonable?

What is the purpose/effect of setting "installer class" on a custom action?

Thanks!