Visual Studio has rich support for installation-time actions. However, there is much documentation explaining just what you can do with it. That is why we are delighted to bring your attention to Arnaldo Sandoval's DevCity article on Installer Class and Custom Actions.
Installer classes can be created using any .NET language capable of being compiled into a library or executable. Arnaldo's walk-through uses C#. The walk-through begins with a flow-chart of installer events your module can respond to.
An important point called out by the author is that global variables not always being available from event to event. This is because the installer may reinitialize ones class from time to time. To share state between events, use the savedState parameter instead.