Windows – Automatically select features for silent MSI install

UPDATE June 2018: Although the tool shown below is no longer available for download, I found it via Wayback machine. I assume it is OK and legal to link to it, seeing as the tool was freeware. Updated links below.

UPDATE: This tool from Wise is regrettably not downloadable anymore. I am not sure if it is OK to distribute it either. It seemed to be a free tool distributed as part of their main Wise Package Studio suite, but I don't think it is open source. I wish they would release it as an open source tool.

The Wise packaging products have been discontinued due to a number of legal issues.

On a related note. To deal with the ridiculously complex command line for msiexec.exe you can use this free msi command line builder tool from Wise: http://www2.wise.com/filelib/WICLB.exe (resurrected from Wayback machine).

Please run the download by virustotal.com for safety.

It allows you to build a command line interactively:

At the current time you must set the registry options beforehand if you want to do so. The Chocolatey package does this based on package parameters you pass to the install command:

choco install git -params '"/GitAndUnixToolsOnPath"'

or

choco install git -params '"/GitOnlyOnPath"'

That said, if you want to get it as an argument, the Git for Windows folks are very accepting of Pull Requests. If you have the InnoSetup installer experience, please contribute at git-for-windows/build-extra.

More Information

If you are curious to see how it works, inspect the files section of the package page and tools\chocolateyInstall.ps1 and you will see the following:

if ($gitCmdOnly) {
  # update registry so installer picks it up automatically
  New-ItemProperty $installKey -Name "Inno Setup CodeFile: Path Option" -Value "Cmd" -PropertyType "String" -Force | Out-Null
}

if ($unixTools) {
  # update registry so installer picks it up automatically
  New-ItemProperty $installKey -Name "Inno Setup CodeFile: Path Option" -Value "CmdTools" -PropertyType "String" -Force | Out-Null
}