More Info on the Difference Between Command Line and Transforms

What is the difference between customizing an installation through the use of command-line parameters and the application of transforms? Get your answers (right here) while they're hot.

The main difference between these two types of customizations is that the customizations applied using the command line are only applied to the current installation but the changes made using transforms are applied during the original installation and all future repair and modifications of an installation.

When customizing the .MSI through a command line, you can only modify properties. An example of modifying a property through the command line is:

msiexec /i C:\Example.msi ALLUSERS=2.

This would set the property ALLUSERS to 2 for the current installation. However, this customization is not applied to the cached version of the .MSI, so during repairs, the value of ALLUSERS would be the value assigned at design time.

If you want to further customize an .MSI, you could do so through a transform. In addition to specifying a value for a property, you can also add additional files, modify or add registry keys, add custom actions and many other things with a transform that you could not do through the command line. These changes are applied to the cached version of the .MSI.

For example, if the property of ALLUSERS was 1 in the base .MSI and 2 in the applied transform, the ALLUSERS property would be 2 in the cached version. If the installation was repaired or modified, the ALLUSERS property would always remain 2.