Scripting

Has anyone attempted automate a .MSI creation?

For example...  Let's say you have a package.  Every other week an update of a few files come down to be inserted into the package.  The new files and all of the information would have to be input into the appropriate tables, and a new product code generated.  The appname is always the same so this isn't an issue, we would simply uninstall / re-install.  The app uses a command line switch which enables me to install 1 flavor of an updated .exe over another. 

The automated installation should take into consideration that there may be custom actions added at some point. 

My opinion is that it doesn't sound reasonable to expect something like this to ever work, at least not in the way a .MSI is configured today.  That being said, the .MSI's I'm creating are fairly small and fairly easy. 

How about .Manifest file generation without a utility such as Manifest maker?  Can that be automated as well.  Wisecomcapture.exe is an Okay utility but I find that using Wise9 to capture the registry key's works much more consistent than wisecomcapture for this type of thing.  Wisecomcapture seems to miss an awful lot of keys that wise9 picks up effortlessly.

Thanks for your input.