In my setup project, I have selected VC++ library as a pre-requsite and it does intsall that. In my setup project's Dependency, it also lists policy_8_0_Micorosft_vc80_CRT_x86_x64.msm as requred. Is this redundent? The reason why I want to get rid of it is because when I check my solution into VSS, it creates a separate layers of folders just to point to this file, i.e., SolutionName\program Files\common files\merge modules. This seems to point to the location of where the file belongs or should be copied to? But I would really like to not have all these extra folders. How can I have my solution to show the exact same amount and levels of folders as they are on my local hardrive? Thank you.
You did not say what tool you are working with to create your MSI.
No, the msm is not redundant. The msm has manifest and certificate for the dll, but not the dll itself. I don't know the exact purpose of it, but it seems to be related to side-by-side installation.
When you check into VSS, as I understand, VSS is concerned about the source of your project, rather than the result. Since the msm is probably located in the place you specified, that's what is being stored in VSS. If you really want to remove the layers of folders, you probably would have to move the msm several levels up, and include from there. Without real understanding of what it is and how it works, I would strongly suggest to leave it alone, since the probability that you will break it is high.
Yes, that's what I guessed, just wanted to be sure.
Your best course is to live it the way it is. Where the MSM is located on your development computer will not affect the result in any way, i.e. the way your setup gets installed at the destination computer.
