Re: [GD-Windows] merge modules

[Rich <leg...@xm...>]

In article <00e101c35180$fde8c4e0$8476a841@apathy>,
    "Daniel Vogel" <vo...@ep...>  writes:

> I have the Speech SDK 5.1 redistributeable here in merge modules form and
> would love to install it on customers machines - clearly just copying the
> .msm files somewhere won't suffice :)

I guess its not clear what you want to do.  Merge modules are essentially
libraries for windows installer based setup programs.  They are just
MSI databases that are merged into your existing MSI database,
according to some rules for following the merge.  They add database
entries to your MSI that install the components packaged by the merge
module.

If you were distributing an SDK and wanted to include merge modules
that allowed developers to install components provided by your SDK,
then for the developer you would just copy the merge module onto their
machine when installing the SDK.  The developer would then use the
merge module to build their installation package (MSI) that would
install their own components and your components by virtue of the
additions made to their MSI database by your merge module.

For instance, Visual Studio supplies merge modules that install the
DLLs associated with Visual Studio.  An application developer uses the
merge modules to ensure that the VS related components are installed
properly, rather than re-inventing an installation procedure for those
components (which would most likely contain errors or oversights).

So the Speech SDK includes merge modules that you use to ensure that
your application, which depends on the Speech SDK redistributables, 
has those redistributables properly installed along with your
application.  You don't need to know exactly what should happen to
install those redistributables because its packaged into a merge
module for you to use, hiding those details.
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