Install MSP file with MSI

While handling with MSP of applications, sometimes a question comes in mind that can an MSP be installed along with MSI?
The answer is yes, but with a few conditions involved.
The conditions are explained later in the post with some description.

First I will give you the command line to install MSP along with MSI:

msiexec /i {Path to MSI}\Installer.MSI PATCH={Path to MSP}\Patch.MSP /qb

If there is a transform as well to add you can include it in the command line as well.

msiexec /i {Path to MSI}\Installer.MSI TRANSFORMS={Path to Transform}\Transform.MST PATCH={Path to MSP}\Patch.MSP /qb

The only thing which you have to take care in the command line is that you will have to give a complete path to MSP.
Relative paths do not work in this case.

This will apply the patch as in the updated files will be installed from the patch rather than from the MSI.

This process is greatly useful when there are a lot of patches to be applied to an MSI.

There might be cases that the MSI is already deployed on your client machines and you need to patch it with this new patch which has come now. You can deploy the MSP over the MSI and then it is suggested to change the initial MSI package to include the MSP.

If you have multiple MSP for an MSI then the way you implement it actually depends on the way the MSP are created for the MSI. There are two kinds of MSP:
1) Incremental
2) Add-on

The above ones are my terms and not Microsoft's and I am using them just for explaination purpose.

In Incremental MSP, say version 1.2 contains all the content for version 1.1 and so can be installed directly on top of MSI which is version 1.0. Similarly version 1.3 will install directly on top of MSI version 1.0. So you can skip the previous MSP version and directly install the latest version on top of your MSI.

In Add-on MSP, the MSP has only additional data from the previous version of MSI or MSP. For example, say version 1.2 has a few files added but it does not contain the files/registries which were added or modified in version 1.1 of MSP. So in this case you will have to install both MSPs, version 1.1 and 1.2 one after the other on top of MSI version 1.0
You can use command line like this:
msiexec /i {Path to MSI}\Package_1.0.MSI PATCH={Path to MSP}\Patch_1.1.MSP; {Path to MSP}\Patch_1.2.MSP /qb

The order of MSP mentioned here is important as it will install in that particular order only.

I hope this article is helpful to you in organizing and maintaining your Operational work with Application Packaging.