The setup for Microsoft Office 2007 (and possibly 2010) was built on top of WiX ( . Note that this does not mean that you can emulate Office 2007 customization yourself using only WiX.
In addition to what you actually see - Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, or any other application designed to deploy Enterprise, depends on the Windows Installer technology. You can use Installshield , WiX or many other software products to achieve the same end result.
HOWEVER, note that Office, Visual Studio, and a host of other installations use the Windows Installer (MSI) without using the Windows Installer (UX) user interface . One of the amazing features of the Windows Installer is that you can create your own external user interface so that the “visible” things look the way you want, while using the Windows Installer and MSI backstage (Office installs and configures many MSI packages showing the user as one installation process).
As a rule, you should develop your UX code in your own code ideally with minimal dependencies (for example, without managed languages and, if possible, depending on old libraries). Users may not have VS2005 / 2008 dependencies on first run, so the target RTM is not SP1). Unfortunately, this is not a simple wizard or library that you can rely on, it effectively develops a small stand-alone application from scratch in a language that you may or may not be familiar with (it becomes more and more difficult for source code developers to find, code is often crawled in customization, because it is "easier").
tl; dr - Running a part other than the UI is a problem using Windows Installer technology (such as WiX). The user interface will require special development, possibly in its own C ++ code.
saschabeaumont
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