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How to create an installer from Visual Studio |
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1. Open the Visual Studio solution |
| Open the solution for which you want to create the install package. |
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2. Add an Advanced Installer Project to the solution |
| Once the Visual Studio solution is loaded: |
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| From the New Project dialog select Advanced Installer Project |
| In the Solution field select Add to solution option |
| In the “Name” field you can write a name for your project |
| Press [ OK ] to add the project to the solution |
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| By default, when adding an Advanced Installer Project, the build output of the solution will not be automatically added to the installer project, to do this you must: |
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| Go to the Files and Folders section of the Installer Project |
| Press "Add Project Output" button |
| Select the “Primary Output” and “References” |
| Press [ OK ] |
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| Following these steps, Advanced Installer Extension for Visual Studio adds in the installer project all application references except the Microsoft .NET assemblies. |
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3. Create the first install package |
| In Visual Studio select "Build" > "Build Solution" option to start the build. |
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| After the build is completed successfully, it will create two main files: HelloWorld.exe which is the output from the C# project and Installer Project.msi which is |
| the installation package. |
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4. Edit the installer project |
| Using the Advanced Installer Project viewer, you can edit basic information about your installer like Product Details, Launch Conditions, Install Parameters, and |
| much more.. |
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| Let's suppose we have an Enterprise edition of Advanced Installer. By default, the installer project will be created based on a Freeware license. Since we want to use |
| features from the Enterprise edition, like selecting a theme for the installation dialogs, we will need to upgrade our project type: |
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| Press the [ Edit in Advanced Installer ] button to open your installer project in Advanced Installer |
| From the “Project” menu select “Options...” |
| Navigate to the Project Type Tab and select Enterprise |
| Press the [ OK ] button |
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| Now, that we have an Enterprise project we have full access to all the available Advanced Installer Enterprise features. |
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| Go to Themes Page |
| From the right view select the desired theme and variation for your installer dialogs |
| Save the project and exit Advanced Installer |
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| Visual Studio will ask you if you want to reload the installer project since it was modified. Press the [ Yes ] button. |
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5. Add another Visual Studio Project to the solution |
| If an Advanced Installer Project is added to a solution, it will automatically import the build output and all useful information related to the projects from the solution. |
| If later, the existing projects are modified, or another project is added to the solution the import operation must be redone. |
| Let's add a new Visual Studio project to the solution: |
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| From the “New Project” dialog in Visual Studio select "Visual C#" > "WPF App" |
| In the “Solution” field select Add to solution option |
| Press the [ OK ] button. The new project will be added to the solution |
| Rebuild the solution |
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6. Create the final install package |
| Include the second project in the installer package: |
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| Select the Installer Project.aip file from the "Solution Explorer" |
| Check that both projects output builds are included in the installer package from the “Files and Folders” page |
| Rebuild the solution |
| Test the new installation package |
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| The newly created installer will contain all the projects from the solution. |
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7. Automatically import .VDPROJ files (optional) |
| If you have solutions that contain old Visual Studio Deployment projects (.vdproj) you can automatically convert them to an Advanced Installer project and have it included in your |
| solution, replacing the old VDPROJ. Just open the solution in Visual Studio, with our Advanced Installer VS extension installed, and VS will prompt you to accept the conversion from |
| VDPROJ to AIPROJ (Advanced Installer VS project). |
| The new project Advanced Installer project will contain all the resources from the old VDPROJ. If you want to customize it more just use the "Edit in Advanced Installer" button, |
| available when you open the .aip file in Visual Studio. |
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8. Add project output of a .NET core project to your setup project (optional) |
| If you have a .NET Core project in your Visual Studio solution, here is how to include its output in the setup project: |
| Go to the “Files and Folders" section of the Installer Project, click on "Add Project Output" and check "Publish Profile" option: |
| If there is no publish profile previusly created, you will be asked to create one: |
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| Next, you will be asked where do you want to publish: |
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| Choose "Folder" option in order to publish your application to a local folder. |
| Then, provide the path to the publish folder: |
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| After publishing the application, go back to "Add Project Output" and select the newly created publish profile: |
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| The final step is to build the Advanced Installer project in order to update the output files. |
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