Well I think this might be the final question for this Silverlight 5 project.
I just installed the InstallShield Limited Edition for Visual Studio 2012 and no I am faced with a dilemma. Which installation project to use?
The project is a Silverlight WCF application and I hope that is a simple enough description to go on. What is required is that the client side sees the web environment and the server side has the WCF services (of course).
I have not worked with this kind of project before so there may be some configuring certain pieces to go certain places and I am very unfamiliar with how all this works. The Installer projects available are as follows:
Setup Project,
Merge Module Project,
Setup Library Project,
Bootstrapper Project,
C# Custom Action Project,
VB Custom Action Project,
C++ Custom Action Project
Which one would I use to create an Installer for this Silverlight 5 WCF solution?
Related
I have created an .msi installer. I want to further add prerequisites (such as .Net) but when I go to Setup Project properties, the Prerequisites button is disabled. How do I enable it?
Other details:
I'm using VS 2015, SQL Server 2008 R2, .Net 4.5.2, C#, WinForms, Win
10 Pro x64
My setup project is in the same solution as the main project
Prerequisities in Visual Studio Projects
In Configuration at the top of the dialog, did you try to select either Release or Debug? That should enable the Prerequisites... button.
Unecessary, outdated prerequisites?
One pet-peeve of mine: is it really necessary to include the .NET runtime as a prerequisite when most users have it installed by their deployment team (corporations) or via Windows Update (home and small office users)?
If there are security updates for the runtime, your old, embedded runtime is just a nuisance to be honest. Corporate packagers spend a great deal of time removing runtimes and prerequisites for corporate deployment where all runtime components are packaged separately in the corporate standard format. Perhaps consider making a special corporate "large scale deployment" version of your setup bundle? Just a zip with components will be very appreciated, along with a one page PDF on how to deploy them.
For the .NET framework you could just add a launch condition to abort the installation if the runtime is not found, and tell the user to get the runtime via Windows Update or from their system administrator or deployment team.
Just a thought I wanted to share with you. Prerequisites can really bloat a setup - especially when they are almost never needed like the .NET framework. In the future we will certainly pull prerequisite packages straight from online repositories and not embed anything in our main setups (and probably struggle with new security issues from that approach).
What version of the .NET Framework is included in what version of the OS?
Selectively disable versions of the .NET Framework (.NET versions overwrite each other)
WiX and other deployment technologies
Setup projects are rather limited. If you find yourself needing more features, you might want to check out the WiX toolkit.
Here is a previous answer on WiX and other deployment tools that seems to have been helpful for people: MSI vs nuget packages: which are is better for continuous delivery?
I've created a wpf application. Now I need to make an application to download it from a web site to various client machines with no server software. What are the essential requirements that need to be installed from the web to the client in order for the application to work? I am very new to this and am learning as i go along
As stated by the others you may publish your application using clickonce. An alternative approuch is to use a third party installer like wise(yee old .msi is removed from newer visual studios). MS wants you to use clickonce for deployment it may be done manually using mage, through MageUI or visual studio directly. I only use mage.exe for deployment of WPF and XBAP applications, it's nice if you have a buildserver set up and all. Just make some scripts for the deployment that you may reuse, once deployed check your manifest file to see what's included and not.
General information about clickonce.
Mage.exe located in your windows sdk for manually deployment
MageUI, useless for any live production envirnoment...
Hope it helps you some, I know this can be a pain.
Cheers,
Stian
I have created one WPF application...
Now, in installshield, i want to make installation package for the same, so which project type i should select?
Actualy, now i have used basic MSI project....
but m still struggling with another problem....
i have created setup in English and German languages.... and i want to install .Net framework language pack according to the language selected by user....
Can any1 help me out...??
The C# wizard adds the InstallShield project to your visual studio solution. Personally I never put my application code and installer code in the same solution so I would just choose the Basic MSI project type.
I have a WPF C# desktop application that will need to be deployed as MSI (Windows Installer deployment, not ClickOnce deployment) in VS2010. My application will generate SQL CE database in run-time, manipulate Excel Workbook, and receive/transmit data from/to COM Port - so I don't know what is the appropriate way to deploy such an application.
I am looking at Windows Installer Deployment Tasks which doesn't help me to get started.
Could anyone show me some resources that give instructions on how to deploy an application as an MSI installer?
If you don't want ClickOnce, then you'll probably need to create your own MSI. In that case, you can use:
The built-in Setup project type in Visual Studio. It does a decent job but has limitations. Works very well if you don't have many dependencies or custom actions.
A commercial tool like InstallShield
WIX (Windows Installer XML)
I've tried both 1 and 3. While WIX has a little bit of a learning curve, it is a very rich way to do what you want to do. There is a fair bit of documentation available and some very nice "out of the box" wizard sequences to handle your standard install scenarios (licenses, feature selection, dependencies, etc). WIX does have some VS integration that works quite well.
You can find out more on WIX at http://wix.sourceforge.net/
Note:
The VS setup project can do custom actions, and install dependencies, but you have to use custom actions. If you want to parameterize the custom actions, then you'll need to find the not-so-intuitive instructions on that topic.
The other limitation of the VS setup project is that the setup project can only be compiled to an MSI by VS (devenv.exe). That means that the MSI cannot be compiled on a build server unless you install Visual Studio there too. This was a show stopper for me, so I switched to WIX and was very happy with the result.
For those like me who found this post after searching high and low for how to deploy an MSI these days, you now need an extension as the visual studio team removed the built in startup project functionality. You now need to download the Visual Studio Installer Projects extension.
See this user voice post for discussion of the removal, and here is a link to the extension.
Useful for people looking for a quick solution to generating an MSI through Visual Studio rather than getting deep into Wix (although if you need more advanced deployment options, definitely go that route).
Configure your WPF application to publish as a ClickOnce application. You can do that in the 'Publish' tab of the project properties.
If you use the 'Publish Wizard' (by clicking on the aptly named button on the properties page) you can specify (on the second page) that the user will install 'From a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM'. This option will produce a setup.exe file in the publish sub-folder of your project output directory. This setup.exe program when launched by your user will install the WPF application. You may choose to include an update functionality (but you don't have to).
The ClickOnce settings also allow you to include additional files (e.g., your SQL CE database file) and pre-requisites if necessary.
I am trying to build a setup-msi using visual studio for my wpf application.
The issue i am facing is that i force primary output from wpf project to the setup project
and the dependencies are calcaluted automatically.
I run the msi locally (on the machine i built the wpf app) and everything works fine.
The problems start when i try to install it on different machines.
On other machines i run the installation process and it finishes justfine
but when i try to run the application i get exceptions about assemblies that could not be found.(e.g System.Web , Version=4,0,0,0 could not be found etc)
I really suck building setup projects but can anybody give a hand?
P.S.: I also tried installShield... same results.
I would guess that the target machine only had .NET Framework 4.0 Client Profile installed. System.Web is in .NET Framework 4.0 Extended, which is installed with the full 4.0 Framework but not with the Client Profile.
Are you bootstrapping .NET 4 in your setup?
Check for the presence of "Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile" and "Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Extended" in Add/Remove Programs (XP) or Programs and Features (Vista/7) on the machines where the application ran fine and those where it gave that error.
Edit: .NET Framework Deployment Guide for Developers. That should help you figure out how best to deploy it.