Introducing Visual Studio Installer

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Microsoft® Visual Studio® Installer is the new tool for authoring simple but powerful application installers in the Microsoft development environment. With Visual Studio Installer, you can develop a Microsoft® Windows® installer-based setup project (.wip file) as an integral part of your solution. The Windows installer package (.msi) file, built from your Visual Studio Installer project (.wip), contains all the data and instructions necessary to install your application.

You and your users will benefit from your use of Visual Studio Installer. As a developer, you will find that Visual Studio Installer simplifies installation design and development and makes it easy to specify complex configuration changes when necessary. Your users will find that .msi files authored with Visual Studio Installer provide easier and more stable product installations.

Easy Authoring

Visual Studio Installer saves you time and effort in authoring application installers by providing:

  • Seamless integration in the Visual Studio shell. Visual Studio Installer is integrated into the Visual Studio shell. If you are an experienced Visual Studio developer, you will be familiar with the windows, editors, and controls in Visual Studio Installer.

  • Installer project templates. Visual Studio Installer provides several wizard-like templates you can use to create installer projects. The following templates are built into Visual Studio Installer:

    • Empty Installer project template. Sets default configurations and creates an installer project into which you can manually add all installation files.

    • Empty Merge Module template. Sets default configurations and creates an empty merge module project you can configure and then build into a merge module (.msm file).

    • Visual Basic® Installer template. Sets configurations and creates an installer project based on the Microsoft® Visual Basic® project you specify and containing the Visual Basic project outputs.

    After creating an installer project with a template, you can further customize your installer by modifying the installation configuration as you wish.

  • Graphical editors. You can use the Visual Studio Installer graphical editors to manage these important elements of your application installation:

    • File placement. With the File System editor, you can specify where files, folders, and shortcuts are installed on the target machine.

    • User interface dialogs. With the User Interface editor, you can specify which user interface dialogs are displayed during the installation. You can also customize some of them.

    • Registry entries. With the Registry editor, you can specify the registry actions you want to take place during the installation.

    • File associations. With the Associations editor, you can specify the associations between file extensions and verbs that are created or modified during the installation.

Authoring Power

In addition to making it easier to build an installer for your application, Visual Studio Installer also gives you power and control in designing application installations. With Visual Studio Installer, you can plan every aspect of the installation and configure them to meet your users' requirements. Specifically, you can:

  • Quickly and easily construct installer projects that contain outputs from more than one Visual Studio product. For example, your installer project can include Visual Basic, Microsoft® Visual C++®, and Microsoft® Visual J++® outputs (.exe and .dll files).

  • Create and configure components to install on the target machines.

  • Manipulate the target machine registry.

  • Create file associations.

  • Specify where to place files and folders on the target machines.

  • Create desktop and start menu shortcuts.

  • Distribute your installation package (.msi) file with all other installation information as uncompressed or compressed cabinet (.cab) files, depending on your and your users' distribution requirements and capabilities.

  • Distribute your .msi file on a number of different media, such as floppy disks and CD-ROMs.

  • Include Windows merge modules (.msm files) in installer projects. This is the correct way to include shared code in a Windows installer package (.msi) file. You can also create your own merge modules with Visual Studio Installer for code that you want to share among .msi files.