Packaging Stuffs

DLL HELL: Dll stands for Dynamic Link Library Legacy software installations in the past were developed in a variety of ways. Setup developers designed their install programs to concentrate on their own products which often impacted on programs that were already installed on the PC. With legacy installations in the past, there might be two applications using the same file, but one might be designed to run on an older version. This led to "DLL hell" where the installation/uninstallation of one application would cause other applications to stop working. In simple words :  For instance there is an application (A) with the dll version 1.0 which is already installed on the machine, there is another application (B) with the same dll name but different version, let us take it as 2.0. When the application B is installed on the system which has App A installed, it overwrites the dll file to version 2.0 and if the app B is uninstalled the Dll also gets uninstalled, hence fail...

Merge Module If there are a number of applications that require a specifically configured component, it would be possible to create a Merge Module that installs and configures that component. That merge module could then be added to the installation packages of each product that required that particular component.  This saves the effort of individually adding the necessary files, registry entries and other components to every installation. Merge Modules are Windows Installer databases that contain separate, self-contained installation components such as files, registry entries and other resources. A merge module cannot be installed alone and must be merged into an existing Windows Installer package. Multiple applications may use the same merge module for shared components. Only vendor supplied merge modules can be used. Such as merge modules provided by Microsoft etc. Due to the complexity of creating a merge module, custom created merge module are not prefe...