Merge Modules for Crystal Rpts Deploy - Pros/Cons/When/Why

[blackduck603]

I am in the process of converting a Visual Studio 2003 .NET VB application to Visual Studio 2005. The application has Crystal Reports included. I am a bit confused about what I need to do as far as Merge Modules for Crystal Reports.

Here is what confuses me....
I found the following information at the link specified.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb971186.aspx

Crystal Reports Basic for Visual Studio
Migrating a Project that uses Merge Modules Deployment to a Project that uses Windows Installer Deployment

To migrate an existing Crystal Reports for Visual Studio project that uses Merge Modules deployment to Windows Installer deployment, you need to follow the instructions in this section.

You will need to remove the merge modules from the setup project. Then, re-build the setup project. Finally, use the .msi Windows Installer file to deploy your application.

I am not sure if I should be migrating to remove merge modules......but an MSI installer sounds right to me. I am just wondering if I remove the Merge Modules, how will the installer know to include the correct Crystal stuff?

Can anyone shed light on the difference between a Merge Module setup and an MSI setup? IE: Is this the recommended way to deploy over updating the setup with the latest Crystal Reports Merge Module(s)?
.....As usual (for me) I seem to have stumbled on conflicting information.

FYI: I tried installing from an MSI deployment where I had removed all Crystal Reports Merge Modules (after converting the project from VS 2003) (as recommended on the MSDN site noted above) and the application installed and ran OK and the reports appeared to run without issue, but I am concerned that I might have lucked out in having the required Crystal stuff on the target PC via another application that was installed or maybe via the .NET 2.0 Framework. Is there any way to determine what specific file(s) are needed by Crystal Reports for a VS 2005 application in .NET 2.0?
I appreciate any comments and/or recommendations.



Thanks.