Software Deployment

Depend on patches.

As i understand you trying to repackage msi + patches...

Why you don't slipstream msi with msp files?

I could do that with the current patches but I'm concerned about the ongoing patches and the fact that

1.) There will be many patches
2.) This is a critical application and I may not have time to create a new installation package with the latest patches.

If it's a critical app, why are you tolerating multiple patches? How, indeed, are you doing any meaningful testing? Anyway, I digress...

In your position, I would simply have multiple packages representing each patched version. In that way, you could easily uninstall a faulty new patch and re-install the previous version.

My 2 cents...

The only meaningful testing that I can do is before the deployment.

Usually I have a say in how things are done, but this is one of those instances where I'm completely bound to just deal with the situation as best I can. I mean, this whole thing is a serious cluster. The vendor is so bad that they want to charge us for them testing their own product to see if it actually works.

Not a bad idea to have multiple packages. I may have to do that, time permitting.

Thanks for the thoughts, though.