Software Deployment

Generally setup which has multiple MSI files tend to provide a Installation log which states the order in which the MSI files were installed. You might need to check the log files created during installation under the application installation directory. Another way is to track the EVENTVWR entries during installation. Once these are identified, you can either cook up a .BAT file or a .VBS file which takes care of installing the packaging MSI's and the MSP in the right order. If SCCM or other deployment tools are used, you must be able to sequence the application installation as suggested by Coppr. However, in some cases, there will always be one main installer file and few support files or prerequisites which are required. Analyse the MSI files to determine the right one which is required.

Answer: you don't. Best practice would be to run each MSI in order and configure them with MSTs to ensure they are configured correctly. Nesting MSIs is almost never a good idea and if you're taking about repackaging 3 MSIs into one, that would be even worse (think patching, upgrades, etc).

In the past, I've taken the installer apart whenever possible and chained the MSIs to complete the install.

For the msi's, I would suggest creating a transform for each to conform to any internal policies you have regarding structure of application packages. You could then chain them either using a batch file or vbscript, or using a deployment solution like SCCM/Altiris.

You could also determine which msi the msp is for, and using the msiexec /p command, you could patch the msi and deploy the already patched msi, instead of having to run the msp after installing the msi's.