Introducing Windows Installer and InstallShield Deployments
by Mike Snell, Lars Powers
Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Unleashed, Third Edition
- About This eBook
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents at a Glance
- Table of Contents
- About the Authors
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- We Want to Hear from You!
- Reader Services
- Introduction
- Part I: Introducing Visual Studio 2015
- Chapter 1. A Quick Tour of Visual Studio 2015
- Chapter 2. The Visual Studio IDE
- Chapter 3. The .NET Languages
- What’s New in C# 6.0 and VB 14
- Language Primer
- Language Features
- Infer a Variable’s Data Type Based on Assignment
- Create an Object and Initialize Its Values (Object Initializers)
- Define a Collection and Initialize Its Values
- Creating an Instance of a Nonexistent Class
- Add Methods to Existing Classes (Extension Methods)
- Add Business Logic to Generated Code (Partial Methods)
- Access and Query Data Using the .NET Languages
- Write Simple Unnamed Functions Within Your Code (Lambda Expressions)
- Splitting an Assembly Across Multiple Files
- Working with XML Directly Within Your Code (VB Only)
- Removing Unused Arguments from Event Handlers (VB Only)
- Creating an Automatically Implemented Property
- Dropping the Underscore in VB for Line Continuation
- Working with Dynamic Languages/Objects
- Covariance and Contravariance
- Asynchronous Programming
- The .NET Framework
- Summary
- Part II: An In-Depth Look at the IDE
- Chapter 4. Solutions and Projects
- Chapter 5. Browsers and Explorers
- Chapter 6. Introducing the Editors and Designers
- Part III: Working with the Visual Studio Tools
- Chapter 7. Working with Visual Studio’s Productivity Aids
- Chapter 8. Testing Code
- Chapter 9. Refactoring Code
- Chapter 10. Debugging Code
- Chapter 11. Deploying Code
- Chapter 12. Developing Applications in the Cloud with Windows Azure
- Chapter 13. Working with Databases
- Part IV: Extending Visual Studio
- Part V: Building Web Applications
- Chapter 17. Building Modern Websites with ASP.NET 5
- Chapter 18. Using JavaScript and Client-Side Frameworks
- Chapter 19. Building and Consuming Services with Web API and WCF
- Part VI: Building Windows Client Apps
- Chapter 20. Building Windows Forms Applications
- Chapter 21. Building WPF Applications
- Chapter 22. Developing Office Business Applications
- Part VII: Creating Mobile Apps
- Chapter 23. Developing Windows Store Applications
- Chapter 24. Creating Windows Phone Applications
- Chapter 25. Writing Cross-Platform Mobile Applications with Apache Cordova
- Index
- Code Snippets
Introducing Windows Installer and InstallShield Deployments
InstallShield is an installer technology created by Flexera; Visual Studio 2015 ships with a version of this software called InstallShield Limited Edition. InstallShield generates installation packages (MSI files), which contain all the information that the Windows Installer runtime needs to execute and support the installation process for that particular payload.
The basic process looks like this:
1. InstallShield, based on your input, bundles your application and its resources within a setup package, typically referred to as an MSI file because of its default .msi file extension. MSI files are a cohesive unit of deployment that is understood by the Windows Installer runtime.
2. The MSI file is delivered to the end users.
3. Running the MSI file launches a wizard that guides the user through the install process. This typically includes querying for information such as where the software should be installed on the hard drive and specifying various options that the software might support in terms of feature set selection.
Note
Earlier versions of Visual Studio offered a dedicated project template for generating MSI packages. With Visual Studio 2012, this approach was deprecated in favor of InstallShield Limited Edition. Even though the InstallShield project template is integrated directly into Visual Studio 2015, you must still register, download, and install the software to use it. If you have Windows Installer setup projects created in earlier versions of Visual Studio, you can import those for use with InstallShield and Visual Studio 2015.
And, as mentioned previously, modern applications are moving more to a store-based publishing ecosystem.
With few limitations, you can craft a setup wizard to handle a variety of situations, including different payloads based on the running operating system (OS) version, adding a shortcut to the Windows startup group, adding Registry entries, and installing device drivers.
Note
Certain applications have special deployment requirements. We reexamine the topic of deployment for the other major application types within each chapter that covers those types. For example, for Azure cloud-based applications, read Chapter 12, “Developing Applications in the Cloud with Windows Azure.”
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