Visual Studio Setup

Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products

August 2006 - Visual Studio Setup

Making of a Service Pack

August 29, 2006 Aug 29, 2006 08/29/06
Heath Stewart
In response to a previous post about how large patches can cause problems, reader Zodman asks, "Would it be fair to say that SP1 is actually ready, and that the only hold up is problems with the install?"While I can't comment on any dates or availability, I can tell you we are working hard to provide the best possible customer experience to ...

Size does Matter

August 23, 2006 Aug 23, 2006 08/23/06
Heath Stewart
In response to a previous post where I mentioned that work was being done on Visual Studio 2005 SP1, reader ringi commented, "I would match rather has SP1 as a complete 4GB install, including having to uninstall Visual Studio 2005 then have it delayed just to save a little bit of bandwidth."Unfortunately, it's not just a question of bandwidth...

Digital Signatures in Windows Installer

August 18, 2006 Aug 18, 2006 08/18/06
Heath Stewart
Digitally signing files helps protect against changes to a file (or any data, really) by validating that a hash of the current file matches the hash stored in the digital signature. Digital signatures also help verify that a package came from a particular publisher by encrypting the hash with the publisher's private key. Verifying the ...

Determine if the Custom Action Function is Exported

August 14, 2006 Aug 14, 2006 08/14/06
Heath Stewart
Another reason a custom action may not run is because the custom action function isn't exported. This may not be common in most patch build systems, but could arise during authoring or if a binary wasn't updated in the Binary table. You should expect to find a log line similar to the following.MSI (s) (1C:C4) [16:57:23:258]: Doing action: ...

Been Busy on Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1

August 14, 2006 Aug 14, 2006 08/14/06
Heath Stewart
I've been away for a while, though I've barely left the Microsoft campus. As we prepare for Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1, I've been very busy with issues: especially an issue with the size of the patch. Visual Studio is probably the biggest product (in terms of the number of files at least; I do know of a couple products using ...