title: How to do registration-free COM in a plug-in architecture
body: <p>We use manifest files to do registration-free COM, as I've also elaborated on in <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/465882/generate-manifest-files-for-registration-free-com">this other question</a>.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Now we're trying to use registration-free COM with an application that supports plug-ins</strong>. The plug-ins are OCX files that can be added to the main application's folder after the main application is already installed. </p>
  
  <p>However, that means that the manifest file of the main application would need to be patched by the plug-in installer. That seems like a dangerous and error-prone thing to do, especially if multiple plug-ins can be installed.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a way to somehow split the manifest file of the main application, so that each plug-in can safely add it's own part as a separate file? Or another safe way to patch the manifest file?</p>
  
  <p>In case it is relevant: we create our installers with <a href="http://wix.sourceforge.net/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">wix</a>.</p>