How do I create a packaged installer that will install multiple applications, similar to XAMPP?

Question

I'm trying to put together an installer package that will install VS2010, SQL Server 2008 R2, and some other development tools into a single executable installer. The idea is to create something similar to XAMPP's installer that installs Apache, PHP, Perl, and MySQL in one convenient installer.

The installers for almost every program are .msi files. Are there any applications that can 'package' all the installers into a single executable? Barring that, what other solutions are there out there to perform something like this? I've looked into using a batch file with the /passive switch for each .msi so it does an unattended install, but I'd like to make it look like a GUI application if at all possible.

Solution

Many commercial setup authoring tools offer more or less support for this. You basically create an EXE or MSI installer which acts as a wrapper for existing third-party packages.

Usually these packages are added as prerequisites, but they can also be executed through custom actions.

You can find a list of setup tools here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_installation_software

Another solution is to create your own EXE wrapper which shows custom UI and handles the third-party packages.