Visual Studio Setup

Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products

Essentials Archives - Visual Studio Setup

About Shared Components

December 21, 2009 Dec 21, 2009 12/21/09
Heath Stewart
Components are the basic unit of installation in a Windows Installer product. They are installed by one or more features, and can contain any number of resources including files, assemblies, registry values, and are recommended for custom resources as well. Examples of custom resources are web sites, virtual directories, SQL tables, and stored...

Patch Applicability

April 13, 2009 Apr 13, 2009 04/13/09
Heath Stewart
When installing a patch package, Windows Installer first determines if the patch is applicable. Depending on how the patch is installed, this happens a little differently. Windows Installer can determine the list of applicable products, or it can be told to which products the patch should be applied.Possible productsTo have Windows Installer ...

Custom Action Guidelines

April 20, 2007 Apr 20, 2007 04/20/07
Heath Stewart
Rob Mensching, father of Windows Installer XML (WiX), blogs about why managed custom actions are a bad idea. Aaron Stebner follows up by saying (and has said before): How do you know what's natively supported? Those who know me already know what I'm going to say: read the docs. The Windows Installer SDK has some information if you look for it...

How Windows Installer uses Languages

October 25, 2006 Oct 25, 2006 10/25/06
Heath Stewart
Language support in Windows Installer can be confusing until you understand how Windows Installer queries for and uses languages. Some wonder why Windows Installer packages have two different places to set the language. Some wonder why, for example, localized packages install using a different language than the user's default UI language. Some...

File Sequencing and How Files are Located

May 19, 2006 May 19, 2006 05/19/06
Heath Stewart
The File table in a Windows Installer package has a Sequence column that begins with 1. Besides determining in what order files are to be installed, this column serves another, relatively more important function: determining where the source files are located.In concert with the Media table, a range of sequence numbers identify in which ...

Diagnosing Installation Errors

December 14, 2005 Dec 14, 2005 12/14/05
Heath Stewart
When problems occur when installing, repairing or patching, or uninstalling a product using Windows Installer technology, you need to be able to figure out what happened and why it happened. Dialogs that occur when the user interface is displayed can be helpful sometimes, but many times you need to look at a log to determine the exact cause of...

MSI Databases and Code Pages

October 5, 2005 Oct 5, 2005 10/5/05
Heath Stewart
A Windows Installer database is full of strings. Most times those strings don't cause a problem when using the standard, printable characters found in all code pages. These are called ASCII characters and are the same for the first 7 bits (0x00 through 0x7F) for all code pages except for a few rare code pages in existence for legacy support. ...

How Patching Works

September 12, 2005 Sep 12, 2005 09/12/05
Heath Stewart
Previously I blogged about what is in a patch, but how do patches work? To put it imply, patches transform a view of the product or products that the patch targets.Patches (.msp files) contain a set of transforms: one transform changes the target product into the upgraded product, and one transform adds information specific to the patch. This ...

What's in a Patch

September 1, 2005 Sep 1, 2005 09/1/05
Heath Stewart
Windows Installer relies on structured storage for information about the installation package and to store data used by the installation such as any Binary types and cabinet files. Patches (.msp files) are no different in structure but will contain different data. Up until Windows Installer 3.0, patches themselves didn't contain any standard ...