Developer Solutions for Web and Other

Custom Action The Custom Action is added to the Setup Project, select the Project node and hit the Custom Action button. This allows you add an Action to a particular phase in the Installation. But first you must create the Custom Action. To Add a Custom Action you must first have a Custom Action created, this is usually in the form of a Installer Class, this should be created in a seperate project, the Installer Class is actually one of the File Templates in the C# Projects. So it's File->New Project and select Visual C# Projects. Then add a Class Library, this will prompt you for the Class Library Types , select "Installer Class". Walkthrough - Creating Custom Action (msdn). Also here's a more comprehensive document on Setup/Installer implementations, it delves into the Registry etc Getting Started with Setup Projects (SimpleTalk). Visual Studio Setup Projects and Custom Actions (Simple Talk). Create your Installer Class and then add it as a Custom Action to the ...

With installer issues it's always difficult debug problems. If it's the Installer itself i.e. work done in the setup.vdprj itself then you maybe in a spot of bother. There are some logging options which are available to you.The other problem you may have is with your Custom Action if you have one. This maybe easier to diagnose, asyou can use the Visual Studio Debugger to attach but this in itself is not always easy todo. If you have problems with your installer itself and not the Custom Action then try this: You can also Log installer actions by activating the installer logging, this is done through a registry entry, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223300 . All your doing is adding a "String Value" named "Logging" and a value "voicewarmupx" to the registry entry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer I've done this and found some useful info but it's not that easy to read, at least it tells you the command that was...

The ProjectAggregator is a dll that is required in order to use Packages developed with Visual Studio's 2005 Extensibility SDK. The projectaggregator.dll must be dropped into the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE directory, if it doesn't exist then the end user will not be able to open projects in Visual Studio 2005 that are associated with your Package. Microsoft provide an installer ProjectAggregator.msi which does this work for you. The problem with this is you either tell all your clients to run the projectaggregator.msi themselves after or before installing your Package or else you include the installation of it in your own installer. The second option is of course the right one, as who would expect customers to run more than one installer. To include this in your installer however you need to create what is known as a BootStrapper project. The Bootstrapper is another installer that wraps the installer you actually wish to run. The idea is you include ...

Aaron Stebner's Blog Common problems I've found while playing around with the creation of Windows installers is that if you break the uninstaller functionality it's very difficult to uninstall at all. There are a couple of ways to attempt to repair, this 1. Force overwrite of the installer with a known good installer and then uninstall. msiexec.exe /fvecmus 2. Repair the installer with a known good installer (Control Panel->Add/Remove Programs, locate you Applications installer and select "Click here for support Information", then select Repair from the resultant dialog, now point to a new location of a good installer) Then Remove. 3. Use a tool name MsiZip.exe, it's available with the MS Windows SDK , it cleans up the registry (the SDK installation takes quite a while). 4. A Windows Installer Cleanup Utility . The windows installer keeps a list in the OS of files installed by the installer, if you cannot uninstall because windows thinks one of these files ...

Bootstrapping is the creation of a wrapper installer around already existing installars or files. It's useful if you have multiple installation files that you'll like the user to install in on step. The Bootstrapper itself is a .exe installer file, it also may have .SED file which contains details of the contents of the .exe. There are a few applications out there to generate a bootstrapper, the most simple I've seen is the an app called IEXpress . IExpress Is actually installed on windows (System32/iexpress.exe). This creates an installer, you tell it what files you wish it to include in the installation. I've only played with this so far and it appears to me that the isntaller can only install upto 2 setup.exes. You can include as many files as you like, but the files cannot have the same name, because of this you will probably need to rename your setup.exes to something else because you cannot have 2 files with the same name. After you've included all the files...

Latest Release ('Rosario' November CTP msdn) now has Visual Studio Integration. WiX Tutorial (tramontana). WiX documentation (sourceforge). WiX and Visual Studio (msdn forum). WiX integration in Visual Studio using Votive (Votive blog). WiX integration (msdn). WiX Forum. Building setup packages for Visual Studio project templates and starter kits ( Aaron Stebner's WebBlog) WiX Tallow tool WiX is a methodology to write installers. WiX has a compiler/linker (candle/light) which may give the installer writer some validation before deployment. The contents of the end installer (.msi) are edited using an XML file. I haven't found WiX to be advantageous over the ordinary Visual Studio Setup Project. Visual Studios SDK has a project template (from Votive) for creating WiX installers. This project template gives you the skeletol wix file to start and the build commands are built into the project, all you've to do is create new GUIDs ,these guids are only for the installer,...

You've got your Web Project in Visual Studio and you want to create a way to provide it as an installation. There are 2 ways to do this: 1. Create a Web Deployment Project from your Web Project and then use the output of this as the input to another project, a Setup Project. After you've achieved this you'll have an MSI installer file which has configurable elements, these configurable elements will be dictated by yourself when creating the Web Deployment Project and the Setup Project. 2. Create a WebSetup project from your Web Project. After you've achieved this you'll have an MSI installer file. Option 2 is the simpler option. The difference between the 2 options is that the first provides extra control using the Deployment project, such things a MSBuild and assembly type deployment. If you choose option 1 then: You can quickly create a Web Deployment Project by right-clicking the Web Project in the Visual Studio Solution Explorer. This will copy the contents of y...

Setup Programs Installer creation using VS2005 Getting Started with Setup Projects (SimpleTalk). Visual Studio Setup Projects and Custom Actions (Simple Talk). Updates to Setup Projects (SimpleTalk). To create an Installer using Visual Studio you must create a Setup Project. A setup project contents are files and outputs of other projects in the solution. The Setup Project template can be found in the Visual Studio New Project dialog under Other Projects->Setup and Deployment->Setup Project. Tip! To debug installation or just see what's happening in the background and view system variable values use the msiexec logger, it logs everything that's happening on installation, it can also be used for uninstall install: msiexec /i yourinstaller .msi /l* yourinstaller .log or verbose msiexec /i yourinstaller .msi /l*v yourinstaller .log uninstall: msiexec /uninstall yourinstaller .msi /l* yourinstaller .log or verbose msiexec /uninstall yourinstaller .msi /l*v yourinstaller .lo...

Project and Item Templates Create Reusable Project and Item Templates for the development team . Project Template Creation Creation of a project or item template is pretty straight forward. Use the File->Export Template to create the template, the wizard will ask you which Project you wish to base your Template on, this will result in the contents of that Project being added to the Template. Note that depending on the type of Project you select will determine where the Template appears in the File->New Project dialog. i.e. If you base your Template on a Website Project in VB then the Template will appear in the File-New Website and under the VB section in the File->New Project dialog. Create a project like the one found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/01/CodeTemplates/default.aspx . The Template is just a zip file with an extra xml file within, the xml file describes what to add to the project when a user uses File->New Project. If you wish to generate Projec...