Visual Studio Setup

Announcing Windows Installer XML v3.6 Release Candidate

May 31, 2012 May 31, 2012 05/31/12

Heath Stewart

On a day of many great Release Candidate (RC) announcements, I should not forget another important RC milestone: Windows Installer XML (WiX) v3.6 RC.We’ve made a lot of improvements, simplified some scenarios, and fixed a lot of bugs. Download v3.6 RC and give it a try and let us know if you find any other issues...

Announcing Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate

May 31, 2012 May 31, 2012 05/31/12

Heath Stewart

Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate (RC) – formerly known as Visual Studio 11 – is now available for download! Jason Zander’s blog has a lot of great information on all the exciting changes we have made, including improvements to setup. I encourage you to download and give VS2012 RC a try. Should you find any ...

Visual Studio 11 Beta Updates

April 6, 2012 Apr 6, 2012 04/6/12

Heath Stewart

Today we announced a new method of delivering updates using a notification system many Visual Studio developers should be familiar with: the Visual Studio Extension Manager. Developers will now be notified in Visual Studio when updates are available.When the notification balloon is clicked, Extension Manager will open to a new node: Product ...

Why Visual Studio 11 Requires Space on the System Drive

March 7, 2012 Mar 7, 2012 03/7/12

Heath Stewart

Users have asked why space is required on the system drive (typically the C: drive) when they choose to install Visual Studio 11 to another drive.While Visual Studio 11 does allow you to install the majority of features to another drive, VS11 still requires space on the system drive for the following reasons: Shared runtimes like the .NET ...

Packaging Caching in Burn

March 7, 2012 Mar 7, 2012 03/7/12

Heath Stewart

There are times when repairing or servicing a product that source media is required. As more product installs move to web-based installs, these prompts for source are harder to solve. In order to replace missing, corrupted, or older files, the source is required because those files have to come from somewhere.Burn, the bootstrapper application...

Announcing Visual Studio 11 Beta

February 29, 2012 Feb 29, 2012 02/29/12

Heath Stewart

Along with the release of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, we have released Visual Studio 11 Beta and Jason Zander has announced many of the great new and improved features in VS11 Beta. We have also introduced a new setup experience with VS11. Setup is built atop Burn, the Windows Installer XML engine, as well as the managed bootstrapper ...

Introducing Sticky Patching and Add-ons

February 21, 2012 Feb 21, 2012 02/21/12

Heath Stewart

Late last week I checked in a feature for Windows Installer XML’s (WiX) chainer, Burn, that I’m really excited about (ask my colleagues): sticky patching.This is a feature at the bundle (what we call our composition of packages for Burn) level that supports related bundles of type “Patch” and “Addon”. ...

Introducing Package Reference Counting

February 21, 2012 Feb 21, 2012 02/21/12

Heath Stewart

These days it’s more common to install products composed of more than one installer package. Modern applications are often a loose fitting of localized components and being authored into a single package just isn’t practical.For example, a localized application will undoubtedly have neutral or single-language binaries while using ...

Introducing Managed Bootstrapper Applications

October 28, 2011 Oct 28, 2011 10/28/11

Heath Stewart

Now that WiX v3.6 has been released, I introduce the managed bootstrapper application (MBA) interoperability layer. It’s been available for a while actually, and if you’ve installed any builds of WiX v3.6, or the Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0 Developer Preview you’ve seen it in action. While Burn – the WiX bootstrapper engine – and...

Installing across network may slow Visual Studio 2010 and Service Pack 1 setup

May 31, 2011 May 31, 2011 05/31/11

Heath Stewart

If you are installing Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 from across the network and are experiencing slow install times, this could be caused by low network bandwidth and long verification times.How to work around this issueFor Visual Studio 2010 RTM, copy the entire contents of the network directory locally. This ...