UPDATE 6/12/2014: We have released the final version of this extension – v1.0.0.0. This release addresses:

• Warnings when building with Microsoft.bcl.async
• Error 2727 occuring with more than 1 content file
• Some cases of the 0x8000000A when using the command line

Unfortunately we couldn’t address all cases of the command line issue for this release as we’re still investigating the appropriate way to address them. What we do have is a workaround that we believe will work for almost all of them. If you are still suffering this issue then you can try to change the DWORD value for HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftVisualStudio12.0_ConfigMSBuildEnableOutOfProcBuild registry value to 0. If this doesn’t exist you can create it as a DWORD.

UPDATE 5/27/14: As we progress towards an RTM release for our extension, we wanted to let you know that we just posted the 0.9.1.0 version to the Visual Studio Gallery. In fact you should be getting a notification in your Notification Hub and/or the Extensions & Updates dialog right about now.

This version addresses a number issues reported by customers including:

• Error 1001 – InstallUtilLib.dll, custom installer actions failure
• Cases of an un-closable modal dialog appearing
• Builds causing the VS Repair dialog to appear

Please try this extension update and let us know if it doesn’t address the above, and of course about any other issues that you find.

We have heard many customers express the desire that we bring back support for Visual Studio Installer projects. In fact this was one of the topmost voted on suggestions on User Voice for Visual Studio and with this extension release we hope to address your feedback both here on the blog and on UserVoice.

We’re happy today to announce the preview availability of the Visual Studio Installer Projects Extension. This preview release provides support for Visual Studio Installer projects in Visual Studio 2013. You can download the extension from the Visual Studio Gallery.

To use this extension you can either open the Extensions and Updates dialog, select the online node and search for “Visual Studio Installer Projects Extension” or you can click here to go directly to the Visual Studio Gallery page that hosts the control.

Once you have finished installing the extension and restarted Visual Studio you will be able to open existing Visual Studio Installer Projects or create new ones.

Our intention with this extension is to give those of you with Visual Studio Installer projects the same functionality that you currently have in Visual Studio 2010. This extension enables those customer who aren’t using Visual Studio Installer projects to have ISLE as their preferred installer project solution and those who are to have support for both ISLE and their existing Visual Studio Installer projects. While the extension is not localized it is fully supported on both localized and English versions of Visual Studio.

For those of you looking for an improved deployment experience in Visual Studio we are continuing our partnership with Flexera to provide InstallShield Limited Edition (ISLE) as our in-box solution. ISLE is a great solution for those customers looking for added capabilities not found in Visual Studio Installer Projects, such as TFS and MSBuild integration, support for creating new web sites and ISO 19770-2 Tagging support, etc.

This release is a Preview version and we’d like to hear from you about any issues you have in using this with your existing Visual Studio Installer projects. We expect to release the final RTM version of this after we have addressed your feedback. So please try it out and give us general feedback via UserVoice and bugs via the Q&A section on the Visual Studio Gallery.

Author : Tony Goodhew,Program Manager, Visual Studio Platform Team After the better part of 19 years spent in Visual Studio (and precursor tools) Marketing, Tony decided that he should either make a career of it or try something new. He joined the IDE Services team as a Program Manager in early 2012 and has been working on Visual Studio extensibility and the Visual Studio Industry Partner Program since then. While not known for enjoying pina coladas and getting caught in the rain, his version of paradise would include a cheeseburger.