I have made a Visual Studios CLR cpp project that requires drivers that need to be installed onto the user's PC before it can run. I have made an installer with a visual studios startup project that will download the required installers to the user's PC; however, I cannot find a way to make the VS startup project run the other installers after it is finished downloading. I've tried adding the .exe files into the custom actions section, but the installer will crash. I am running Visual Studios 2017 with the Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Installer Projects extension added on.
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I was trying to update VS 2017 to 15.6.2 version. As usual VS asked me to update the Installer. But the Installer updating failed and now, when I try to launch the VS updating again, I get this error message:
Error loading vs_installershell.exe: No signature was present in the subject.
Anyone has ever seen this before? Any help will be appreciated.
Microsoft recommends the following procedure in this case:
Close the Visual Studio Installer.
Delete the Visual Studio Installer directory. Typically, the directory is C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer.
Run the Visual Studio Installer bootstrapper. You may find the bootstrapper in your Downloads folder with a file name that follows a vs_[Visual Studio edition]__*.exe pattern. If you don't find that application, you can download the bootstrapper by going to the Visual Studio downloads page and clicking Download for your edition of Visual Studio. Run the executable to reset your installation metadata.
Try to install or update Visual Studio again. If the Installer continues to fail, go to the next step.
There is also a bit of warning:
Performing the following actions reinstalls the Visual Studio Installer files and resets the installation metadata.
But in the end, it reinstalls the VS Updater.
Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/troubleshooting-installation-issues
Got a big problem with the Visual Studio 2017 Installer Projects Extension for Visual Studio 2017 Professional. I added a Visual Studio Installer Setup project to a solution and set it up the way it's basically supposed to be done (Primary Output in the Application Folder and an icon in the Desktop Folder is all that was needed). Then I right-clicked on the Setup project, clicked "Build" and then I get this:
Please wait while Windows configures Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2013.
And then it stalls indefinitely. I have to close Visual Studio in Task Manager to stop everything. What's more, I'm Visual Studio Professional 2017, not 2013. I used to have Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate, but I uninstalled it. What could possibly be causing the confusion?
It appears that you have also got Visual Studio 2013 installed, and that there is as conflict between 2013 and 2017 because that message is a Windows Installer repair of VS 2013. Something is happening during your build that requires the VS 2013 installation to be repaired. The Windows Event Log (Application) will have an MsiInstaller log entry saying which component appears to be broken. If you post that information there may be a clue to the problem. If you (for example) have manually removed anything that may belong to the VS 2013 installed product then that would cause the same kind of problem.
You have this similar problem:
Rebuilding Visual Studio Installer project, launches Visual Studio 2013 seetup
Visual Studio 2015 msi build initiates another installation
When you say it stalls indefinitely, I would expect it to ask for the Visual Studio 2013 install image so that it can repair it. If you go to Programs&Features and manually repair VS 2013 it might fix the problem.
I also had Visual Studio 2013 installed as mentioned by #PhilDW.
Navigating to Event Viewer → Windows Logs → Application I found loads of warnings:
Detection of product '{9C593464-7F2F-37B3-89F8-7E894E3B09EA}', feature 'Visual_Studio_Professional_x86_enu', component '{E3FF99AA-78B9-4A06-8A74-869E9F65E1FE}' failed. The resource 'C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\URTInstallPath_GAC\' does not exist.
The key here being that the folder C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\URTInstallPath_GAC\ did not exist thanks to an answer in the first link provided by #PhilDW.
Created the missing final folder URTInstallPath_GAC in the path mentioned and the installers now build really fast whereas before they used to take forever (sometimes literally!).
I have written an outlook add-in VSTO in Visual Studio Pro 2017 (VB.NET). I have published it which creates a setup.exe which is OK but I would like to create a proper installer that copies the files locally and can be run silently etc.
How do I go about doing this? When I go to create new project there is no installer project option.
You need to install this extension to Visual Studio 2017/2019 in order to get access to the Installer Projects.
According to the page:
This extension provides the same functionality that currently exists in Visual Studio 2015 for Visual Studio Installer projects. To use this extension, you can either open the Extensions and Updates dialog, select the online node, and search for "Visual Studio Installer Projects Extension," or you can download directly from this page.
Once you have finished installing the extension and restarted Visual Studio, you will be able to open existing Visual Studio Installer projects, or create new ones.
Other answers posted here for this question did not work for me using the latest Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise edition (as of 2018-09-18).
Instead, I used this method:
Close all but one instance of Visual Studio.
In the running instance, access the menu Tools->Extensions and Updates.
In that dialog, choose Online->Visual Studio Marketplace->Tools->Setup & Deployment.
From the list that appears, select Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Installer Projects.
Once installed, close and restart Visual Studio. Go to File->New Project and search for the word Installer. You'll know you have the correct templates installed if you see a list that looks something like this:
Visual Studio 2013 Premium Update 4; Visual Studio 2013 SDK installed.
I see the code sources are for older Visual Stuido version. It has a link to Visual Studio 2010 (instead of 2013) SDK Samples.zip file. I try compile its some projects but I get an exceptions... For example:
Other projects compiled successfully, but I read their instruction of running:
Running the Sample
To run this sample, copy both the
AlphaBlendToolbar.Addin file and the newly-built AlphaBlendToolbar.dll
file into your Visual Studio Addins directory (My Documents\Visual
Studio 2010\Addins) and then open a new instance of Visual Studio
2010. Next, run the Tools | Add-in Manager menu command. Check the checkbox next to AlphaBlendToolbar and hit OK. You should see a new
toolbar with two command buttons on it. The interesting thing about
this sample is that the command button icons have alpha-transparency.
But VS 2013 has not the Addins directory... Ok, I create it:
I compiled the sample of SDK:
but I don't see here the compiled DLL:
Why I have such problems?
The AddIns folder under the Documents folder is not created by default by VS when installed, so you need to create it by hand, as you have done
Remove the folder C:\Users\developer\Documents\Visual Studio 2013\AddIns from the Options window, it is not required, the %VSMYDOCUMENTS%\AddIns folder takes care.
.AddIn files can contain several values to describe the target VS versions. The AlphaBlendToolbar.AddIn file of the sample only contains the VS 2010 target, you need to edit it and add the VS 2013 ("12.0") target:
<HostApplication>
<Name>Microsoft Visual Studio</Name>
<Version>12.0</Version>
</HostApplication>
Notice that there are two .AddIn files, one in the Documents folder (for deployment) and other in your solution (for source control, etc.), ensure that you update both.
FWIW, there is a VS 2013 SDK Samples: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vsx/archive/2014/05/30/vs-2013-sdk-samples-released.aspx
I'm building my own extension for VS2010 and it has to be deployed outside of Visual Studio Gallery. My NSIS installer does a very good job in installing other parts of software, however I can't figure out how to install .vsix extension.
I tried doing that via VsixInstaller.exe which is a part of Visual Studio, however it does not allow to silently install an extension for any VIsual Studio found on the machine and get a proper error code into the installer.
"VsixInstaller.exe /quiet extension.vsix" returns 0 error code no matter what happens and requires /skuName and /skuVersion which is not trivial to detect automatically.
Can I somehow do that manually? ReSharper for example keeps all the extension binaries in it's "Program Files" folder and somehow makes them available for VIsual Studio.
Have you tried using copy aka:
copy xx.vsix "%APPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Extensions"
or
copy xx.vsix %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft"
Registering Visual Studio extensions is complicated process. For pre 2010 VS editions you need to copy appropriate files (.dll/.zip template/.regpkg...) into some folder and then write keys into registry with paths, settings, etc. (many, many keys).
These keys/settings are based on extension you are developing (LanguageService, Package, Add-in, ...)
After 2010 VS editions have new feature - .vsix extensions which is simple .zip archive containing all required files and registry keys.
You need to copy this .vsix file into some folder (recommended is inside VS install directory or other known folder as %VSInstallDir%\\) and then setup VS to load it (like running devenv.com /setup)
Read this blog for more info about discovering VS extensions: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2010/02/19/how-vsix-extensions-are-discovered-and-loaded-in-vs-2010.aspx