What considerations are there for obfuscating my .MSI file with say a .DAT file name?

Question

What considerations are there for obfuscating my .MSI file with say a .DAT file name?

Background

I've seen this choice pursued when folks have a bootstrapper, usually setup.exe, that they always want to call the .MSI file. The justification here is that a Right-Click -> Install operation on the MSI file itself will not work from some technical reason in the package.

Design Consideration

Yes, other folks have used the hiding ‘msi with different file extension’ approach. Over the lifespan of software, the information I’ve received back on this approach is that modifying the file extension just complicates the support and admin scenarios without the targeted benefit of preventing motivated folks from messing with the package. If the bar is ‘keeping honest people honest’ then a LaunchCondition with a good error message is usually enough.

Will post the LaunchCondition solution a bit later.

[Author: Robert Flaming w/ Editorial Support: Stefan Krueger]

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