I have a Visual Studio Installer project that is configured, works fine and is ready for deployment. When I build the project, it creates a .exe file and a .msi file. I can delete the .exe file and install the app with a double click of the .msi file.
My question is: Is it acceptable to just deliver the .msi file to our customers for the installation? Why is the .exe file needed? The goal is to send them one file so they don't get confused, but I want to make sure I'm not doing something fundamentally wrong here.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
The setup.exe is almost always used to install prerequisites for the product, C++ runtimes, .NET, SQL etc. If you have the project then see what it says about prerequisites in the Properties of the project. For example, the app might need SQL Lite or something similar that the setup.exe will install.