Best way to install VS extensions using a Wix4 bootstrapper bundle?

[tianyue-zhou]

I am trying to create a combined installer, which installs multiple MSIs and Visual Studio extensions.

For the VS extensions, I am currently defining an EXE package component to install VSIXBootstrapper and passing the target vsix file path in the argument. But I cannot figure out a good way to detect whether the extension has already been installed. My current workaround is to write to the registry when the extension is installed and set the detect condition based on the registry search result.

I am wondering if there is a better way to do this?

Another approach I can think of is to create an MSI wrapper around the VS extension, but it’s also not elegant.

Thank you!