Visual Studio Setup

Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products

Installation Archives - Page 7 of 25 - Visual Studio Setup

Comparison of PatchWiz and WiX v3 Patch Build

August 24, 2010 Aug 24, 2010 08/24/10
Heath Stewart
The Windows Installer SDK ships a library named patchwiz.dll. This contains the logic to build a patch from pairs of database packages (.msi files, or simply MSIs) along with other configuration properties. Another tool that the SDK ships is msimsp.exe which uses patchwiz.dll and parses command line options. These tools consume an input file ...

Detection keys for .NET Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010

May 4, 2010 May 4, 2010 05/4/10
Heath Stewart
Now that Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 have been released, developers may wonder how to detect them on the system. As with previous releases, we support registry detection of either product family and Windows Installer component detection for Visual Studio. Detecting either product uses a separate set of supported keys. ....

Major Upgrades with Shared Components

April 9, 2010 Apr 9, 2010 04/9/10
Heath Stewart
Major upgrades are Windows Installer products that can be installed like any other product with the added benefit of removing one ore more related products. For example, version 2 of a product can be installed on a clean machine, or on a machine with version 1 already installed and will remove version 1.When another version of a product is ...

Testing for components that install under TARGETDIR

February 26, 2010 Feb 26, 2010 02/26/10
Heath Stewart
A while back I explained how Windows Installer sets the TARGETDIR property to the root of the fixed drive with the most free space available. The problem is that even an attached USB external drive can appear as a fixed drive, and these may be later detached. If components are installed to that drive and the drive is detached, repairing, ...

Test your conditions

February 15, 2010 Feb 15, 2010 02/15/10
Heath Stewart
When testing the serviceability of your product before you ship, it’s important to test any conditions you might have on the product, features, components, and actions.Feature conditions can set the install level of a feature when the package is installed. But as the Condition table documentation states, be sure that the condition does ...

Serviceability

February 14, 2010 Feb 14, 2010 02/14/10
Heath Stewart
It’s always important to test your product before it ships. Servicing it later can prove very costly and very difficult. It’s no different with your installation packages. You need to test not only basic install and uninstall operations, but also test your servicing plan. Problems are inevitable in practically any application, and ...

Verify ISO before burning or mounting Visual Studio 2010 RC

February 10, 2010 Feb 10, 2010 02/10/10
Heath Stewart
If you have downloaded the Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate (RC) from MSDN or the Download Center as an ISO and are having problems installing it, it could be that either the ISO wasn’t downloaded correctly or that it wasn’t burnt to DVD correctly.On the installation error dialog, you will find a link to the installation log. ...

Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 RC and Visual Studio 2010 RC Available Now

February 10, 2010 Feb 10, 2010 02/10/10
Heath Stewart
Announced yesterday for MSDN subscribers, the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidates are available today for everyone to download.Feedback on VS2010 RC has been great, and we hope you agree. Feel free to provide feedback about your installation and development experience. Performance was a major focus for the RC...

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...