How to create an installer for a set of components, some optional, from Visual Studio 2010?

I have a package I am putting together that contains the following components:

1. Core windows service
2. Core web service ( requires windows service )
3. Secondary web service
4. Front end

This is design开发者_如何学Goed for a distributed configuration, where the Core Windows and Core web services have to be installed on every machine, the Secondary web service only needs to be installed on one machine and the front end only needs to be installed on one machine.

All four can be co-located on one machine but aside from the core services having to be installed on the same machine they don't have to be.

All four projects have x86 and x64 variants.

Currently I have an installer for each component built as VS2010 deployment projects. This works fine, but it means a lot of files have to be copied and installed before we can get going and it is far too easy to miss one out. I would like to have an integrated installer that pulls them all together and then allows the user to suggest which components to install on any given machine.

Is there a way to do this with a Deployment Project in Visual Studio 2010? I don't believe I can chain MSI packages, but could I create a single one that deployed the windows service and web services to their various locations in such a way that the windows service was guaranteed to be installed before the web service and that all components can be optional with no installation directories created for components that aren't installed? If so, is there anything I can do to ensure that users only see relevant parts of the interface- showing panels conditionally based on previous checkbox responses or similar?

If not is the best alternative ( as suggested in this question ) to put together a simple Forms application to package the files up and chain them manually?

Take a look at Wix (Windows Installer XML). http://wix.sourceforge.net/ Its an add on to visual studio. You can create much more powerful and flexable msi installers with it than with the default VS projects.