Installing Visual Studio Snippets with Wix - wix

I created an installer for MVVM Light and part of the installation is about code snippets for Visual Studio 2010, 2010 Express and 2008. Unfortunately, the code snippets are installed into a folder with a LCID (culture code, for instance 1033 for en-US). If the snippets are not in the correct folder/LCID, Visual Studio doesn't load them (yes, utterly stupid I know. But this is what we have...)
When VS is installed in English, all is well. However when a Geman (for instance) version of VS is found, the snippets fail to register in VS.
Is there a way in Wix to detect the LCID and to use that as a property, in other words to install the snippets in the correct folder depending on the LCID? I know about multilanguage installers but it seems like a bazooka to kill a fly. Any other idea?
Thanks,
Laurent

The user's locale is available in the UserLanguageID property. You need a SetDirectory to assign the runtime value to a directory's name.

Related

Install Visual Basic in VS2015

I want to install only the visual basic. How can I customize my installation excluding the additional features of VS2015? I have tried the custom installation but I am lost on what is the pre requisite applications needed to make VB projects.
It seems that by default, C#/VB, Web and some Desktop features are included.
Visual Studio allow you to custom this installation. However A Custom installation automatically includes the components that are in a Default installation.
This is from the msdn website.
You can't only install visual basic, sorry.
EDIT :
Even if you must install C#, you can specify your default environment setting to Visual Basic.
I think you just can't because is in the "pack" with c#

How do I point CodeBlocks and Visual Studio Express 2008-2012 to custom Include and Lib directories?

This is a tricky question... I have put together a compilation of DirectX, OpenGL and Windows SDK Include and Lib files into a single directory called, "AllCode." Inside that are Lib and Lib/x64 Directories, and an Include Directory. Essentially everything from DirectX 7 to now is in there. You can check out the page I have this on here:
http://hi-techheadache.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html
The point of this is to make it easy to compile and run code from any book. I want CodeBlocks and Visual Studio Express 2008-2012 to be pointed, as it were, to my AllCode directory, so that anytime it needs to refer to any of those files it can. I don't want any errors from missing files! I want to code something from a book like, "Programming A Multiplayer FPS in DirectX" by Vaughan Young and expect that it will compile, link and run without issue! How do I set each IDE up for this?
BTW I'm on a Windows 7 64-bit machine. All drivers updated and installed. Running the latest version of CodeBlocks, Visual Studio Express 2010 SP1 and Visual Studio Express 2012.
You can create an empty project that specifies the required settings. You want to specify include directories, and add libraries to be passed to the linker. You can save the project somewhere, and then make a new copy of it every time you need to start a new project. You could even include some boiler-plate code if appropriate.
Certainly on Visual Studio you can take this approach further and convert the project into a fully fledged template that appears in the new project dialog: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/s365byhx(v=vs.100).aspx. I expect that CodeBlocks has similar functionality.

Use Environment Variable in WiX script to set Install location

I am creating WiX installer to drop my custom VS 2010 extension inside Visual Studio Extensions folder. I want to use the system environment variable VS100COMNTOOLS to figure out the VS installed path inside WiX script. I would like to use a relative path syntax like %VS100COMNTOOLS%\..\IDE\Extensions to get to the C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions folder or wherever user chose to install VS 2010.
Can somebody please suggest me how I achieve this in Wix script?
WixVSExtension has a bunch of properties available for Visual Studio paths. Not that one in particular but you can use the technique outlined in the question Erik pointed out to construct it from one of the WixVSExtension properties.

What are the options to build an installer on a build-server without Visual Studio

It seems like it's still not possible to build .vdproj on a build-server without having Visual Studio installed. However, using Wix seems to be a lot more complicated.
Are there any other options to do the following task:
Visual Studio 2010 Solution with multiple projects (.csproj)
Many loose content files (not inside assemblies)
Installer must be built on Build-server without Visual Studio on it (devenv.exe / devenv.com)
Installer must create Registry keys
Installer must associate file extensions with installed product
Installer must support upgrades (version upgrades)
Installer should be able to register COM components
Installer should be able to pre-JIT assemblies
My goal is:
Effort to maintain installer is low
Minimal changes if new project (assembly) is added to solution
Ideal: no changes if new content files are added to any of the projects
Maybe I just did not get the point with Wix, but including project output (like in .vdproj) seems very complicated.
Any suggestions very much appreciated!
OK I decided to go with Wix. Found out that using Votive it's possible to include project output like in .vdproj (Binaries, Content, Symbols and even Source Code).
If I run into more complicated situations where this isn't sufficient, I could fall back to some kind of harvester (Heat, Paraffin).
See some more Links in comments below (too little reputation to post more than 1 link in this post).
Check out InstallShield 2010 Limited Edition ( Free for Visual Studio 2010 users ). It has pretty much all the functionality that VDPROJ ( being retired btw ) has and supports silent builds. You can get one license for your dev box and one license for your build machine pretty easily.

MSI Installer error-dialog localization (WiX)

I have created an MSI installer for a .NET 3.5 application written in Visual Studio Express 2008. The installer UI is localized (to danish) and looks fine. My problem is that errors, say a previous version is installed and needs to be removed first, the error dialog is in english. How do I localize error-dialogs too?
I'm not familiar with Visual Studio, but have you checked out http://www.tramontana.co.hu/wix/lesson2.php#2.3 - you need to ensure you specify the correct language and codepages in the Product and Package tags. You might need to edit the source wxs file if VS doesn't provide a GUI for this.