Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com

http://msi2xml.sourceforge.net/

"The command line tool msi2xml converts Windows Installer Databases (.msi) to text based XML files. The complementary tool xml2msi reconstructs the .msi from the XML file."

Utterly brilliant. [Via Almost Perfect] [Via Joshua Allen.]

Ooooo....that is nice...

The command line tool msi2xml converts Windows Installer Databases (.msi) to text based XML files.
The complementary tool xml2msi reconstructs the .msi from the XML file.

There are several possible uses for msi2xml/xml2msi:

• Quality assurance: use the human readable XML file to compare changes between different versions of a .msi file.
• Version control: many version control systems are text based. Store the XML file instead of the .msi file.
• Automated build systems: using xml2msi, existing installations may be updated with new files, and automatically rebuilt.