I am creating a windows application setup project using Visual studio 2008 setup project. This setup will have following steps:
Splash screen
Select Installation folder/directory
Database configuration
Select Components
I am having trouble finding a way to create such installation window in setup. could you please help me to find a solution for this?
Visual Studio's routine for creating install/setup files is fairly weak compared to what you can find out there. Personally, I use a program called Inno Setup. It's an extremely powerful scripting program that allows you to completely customize the installation process. You may have to spend a little bit of time learning the basics of the scripting language it uses but will be well worth whatever time you may spend understanding the language to use the setup utility to create complete installation files for your current and future programs.
Related
We have a very old applications setup launcher developed with Installshield's DemoShield software. We are now looking to replace this with something better.
Although, we are already using Wix Burn with Custom Bootstrapper written in C# and planning to use this technology to build a custom launcher.
Alternatively, we can use C# to build a simple application which would do the same job. But still looking for better and some ready made template based solution.
Are there any open source solutions to this? Any open source code/script based solution would also do the job.
we have our business apps and size is 64 MB. every time add new functionality or change existing one then we rebuild our setup and deliver to client. so this means every time we are delivering 64 MB or more than that to our client.
we have our main win form project and also there many other class library project in our project solution. i am looking for easy way out to deliver only changes to our client.
may be changes could be there in our win form project or could be there in any class library.
so wherever changes made i just only deliver changes through setup and i want just client would install that setup or run any exe file and could see the changes we made in code.
i create setup with VS2005 setup creation option. how suggest me the best option for creating patch like apps which any client just install and get the changes in his apps. give me the best idea to implement in detail. thanks
When using Wix to generate an installer for your project, you can use it to also generate a patch file which will update only changed files.
Visual Studio 2005 setup projects don't really support Patch building and such. It's meant as a rudimentary solution for building installers. Wix, however, is what Microsoft uses internally to build the setup experience for Visual Studio 2012 and other products. There is a very extensive walk-through available here.
Wix does come with a steep learning curve. Would you have been using Visual Studio 2010 or 2012, then you could take advantage of a couple of templates that make it much easier to build a setup for a given type of application. I don't believe these will work with Visual Studio 2005.
This book might also guide you.
I have developed a s/w using acces and sqlserver 2008 and now trying to make a setup file.
How could be the possible way??
I tried in VS2008 software and development. But after installing from the msi file and running the s/w it shows an error
"Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0 provider is not registered”
plz help
You have to do a few things to set up your application:
Install the .NET framework if required
Install SQL Server 2008 if required
Install your application
Define/configure the connection from your application to the SQL Server instance
Create your database/schema in the SQL Server instance.
Ignore the SQL Server problem for a moment, the easiest way to deal with the .NET framework and installing the application would be to use a setup project - which should be available from within VS.NET under Other Project Types|Setup and Deployment. There are hooks in there to give you options for installing dependencies - of which the .NET framework is one.
Ok, you have a tool to create setups (there are several others, e.g. I'm currently using WiX which I like so far, is very capable but can rapidly becomes complex) - the problem now is that the installer you need to build will depend on how and where your application is to be deployed. Do you want to ship a complete, self-contained, application on a disc? Is it to be downloaded internally within a business or distributed over the internet - each of these suggests a different set of packages at one end "everything" at the other you want the smallest possible pieces pulled down as required or perhaps even a different packaging method (e.g. clickonce).
Next up is SQL Server. You can get a redistributable package for SQL Server 2008 Express, so distributing it is not a problem however you have to determine if the user has an existing instance they want to user or if they want to install.
Once you've got an installed instance - you need to be able to create and to maintain (update) the database/schema within that instance. That I suggest you do using code (see here: How to create "embedded" SQL 2008 database file if it doesn't exist?). Which brings us to another point, you not only have to be able to install the application the first time, but you need to make sure that a) you provide a means to uninstall the application and b) that you can neatly do an upgrade in place.
I hope there are enough pointers there to get you moving - in terms of testing this, Virtual Machines are your friend, they give you the capability to create multiple environments in which to test your deployment and the ability to quickly roll back to a clean environment to test again as its virtually impossible to properly test an installer on a dev box (I've found this out the hard way) as it will already have all the dependencies for your application installed.
Pick your tools and that should let you ask more focused questions.
does vb.net have a different way to build an application without using clickonce?
If your application doesn't need an installer then you don't need to use ClickOnce at all. Just do a build in Visual Studio to produce your exe and off you go. There are actually quite a few single-file applications on the internet that are done this way.
If you do need a proper installer, I still wouldn't normally suggest ClickOnce. ClickOnce was designed to allow a user to literally click a button in a web browser just "once" to install your product into a secure-but-limited sandbox. The sandbox where the application lives will then have limited permissions to the file system and such. It's pretty cool in theory. But in practice the limitations involved can become a pain for any but the most basic of applications.
For a powerful installer system for Windows, I'd suggest NSIS. It's free, open source, and scriptable. I've used it to build the installer for a couple of VB.NET software applications. One of them has been downloaded & installed by thousands of users. I'm also the main point of contact for technical support and I haven't heard a single report of a problem with the installer itself.
I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that I've tried others such as InstallShield and Wise and even ClickOnce (that was short-lived). But nothing could compare to the speed, power, reliability, and lightweight-edness of NSIS.
Command line:
vbc /out:MyProg.exe MyFile.vb
Generally when I use ClickOnce when I build a VB.NET program but it has a few downsides. I've never really used anything else, so I'm not sure
what my options are.
Downsides to ClickOnce:
Consists of multiple files - Seems easier to distribute one file than manageing a bunch of file and the downloader to download those files.
You have to build it again for CD installations (for when the end user dosn't have internet)
Program does not end up in Program Files - It ends up hidden away in some application catch folder, making it much harder to shortcut to.
Pros to ClickOnce:
It works. Magically. And it's built
into VisualStudio 2008 express.
Makes it easy to upgrade the
application.
Does Windows Installer do these things as well? I know it dosen't have any of the ClickOnce cons, but It would be nice to know if it also has the ClickOnce pros.
Update:
I ended up using Wix 2 (Wix 3 was available but at the time I did the project, no one had a competent tutorial). It was nice because it supported the three things I (eventually) needed. An optional start-up-with-windows shortcut, a start-up-when-the-installer-is-done option, and three paragraphs of text that my boss thinks will keep uses from clicking the wrong option.
Have you seen WiX yet?
http://wix.sourceforge.net/
It builds windows installers using an XML file and has additional libraries to use if you want to fancify your installers and the like. I'll admit the learning curve for me was medium-high in getting things started, but afterwards I was able to build a second installer without any hassles.
It will handle updates and other items if you so desire, and you can apply folder permissions and the like to the installers. It also gives you greater control on where exactly you want to install files and is compatible with all the standardized Windows folder conventions, so you can specify "PROGRAM_DATA" or something to that effect and the installer knows to put it in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data or C:\ProgramData depending on if you're running XP or Vista.
The rumor is that Office 2007 and Visual Studio 2008 used WiX to create their installer, but I haven't been able to verify that anywhere. I do believe is is developed by some Microsoft folks on the inside.
I agree with Joseph, my experience with ClickOnce is its great for the vast majority of projects especially in a corporate environment where it makes build, publish and deployment easy. Implementing the "forced upgrade" to ensure users have the latest version when running is so much easier in ClickOnce, and a main reason for my usage of it.
Issues with ClickOnce: In a corporate environment it has issues with proxy servers and the workarounds are less than ideal. I've had to deploy a few apps in those cases from UNC paths...but you can't do that all the time. Its "sandbox" is great, until you want to find the executable or create a desktop shortcut.
Have not deployed out of 2008 yet so not sure if those issues still exist.
Creating an installer project, with a dependency on your EXE (which in turn depends on whatever it needs) is a fairly straightforward process - but you'll need at least VS Standard Edition for that.
Inside the installer project, you can create custom tasks and dialog steps that allow you to do anything you code up.
What's missing is the auto-upgrade and version-checking magic you get with ClickOnce. You can still build it in, it's just not automatic.
I don't believe there is any easy way to make a Windows Installer project have the ease or upgradability of ClickOnce. I use ClickOnce for all the internal .NET apps I develop (with the exception of Console Apps). I find that in an enterprise environment, the ease of deployment outweighs the lack of flexibility.
ClickOnce can be problematic if you have 3rd party components that need to be installed along with your product. You can skirt this to some extent by creating installers for the components however with ClickOnce deployment you have to create the logic to update said component installers.
I've in a previous life used Wise For Windows Installer to create installation packages. While creating upgrades with it were not automatic like ClickOnce is, they were more precise and less headache filled when it came to other components that needed to be registered/added.