I have been looking for ages and I can't find any good examples of how to edit the standard installer for visual studio 2010. I need to create an installer that allows the user to specify 3 folder directories to install files into. Once the 3 folders are specified and the files are installed I need to write the directory locations in to an INI file.
Any tips or tutorial links would be great thanks!
This is not supported by Visual Studio. It can be done only with other setup authoring tools.
If you want a free solution, you can try WiX. It has a steep learning curve, but it gets the job done.
Related
I want to create an installer MSI that will unload and move files I need for my plugin into the user's application folder. In my case the application is Cinema 4D, but this detail does not matter. I need to unload a .cyc file and place it in a specific subfolder under the application folder. In addition to that, I need to add a line of code to a .res file another subfolder of the application.
I want my installer to look nice
I have already looked at WIX, NSIS, Advanced Installer and Microsoft Visual Studio as possible options but do not know how to do what I have to do. I've seen installers that do exactly this - so how do I do this?
Most of the tools mentioned above should be able to help you get the job done, except Visual Studio (its support for building setup packages is quite limited).
Here is a step by step article explaining how to do this with Advanced Installer. You can download a trial version of Advanced Installer from the website, during trial you can access all the features.
Disclaimer: I work on the team building Advanced Installer.
I'm a new C++ / visual studio learner so sorry if I don't know something that might be obvious.
Alright so I understand that to get my programs to run on machines without VS I need to distribute the correct .dll files to them. Here are my questions:
How do I know what files to distribute? Once I know the files I need, where can I find them? I already have the .dll package microsoft provides installed but I don't know where to find it or the files in it.
How do I supply these files to the user? Can I just include the files with the installer and then on program start through code move the files to the correct spot? How do I do this? Is it possible to move the files to the correct location through the installer or do I have to do it when the program launches for the first time?
Thanks! Sorry if I left out information or if I formatted this question improperly.
You can choose to statically link your application, then no C++ DLLs are needed.
Otherwise, Microsoft has "redistributable package" EXEs for each version of Visual Studio that you can include with the files that you provide to users. Your installer then runs these as a sub-install. (It does something like start another process that runs that package then waits for it to finish.)
Google visual studio redistributable.
Normally you would use a setup program / installer like InstallShield or WIX, and some of them already have built-in support for adding the redistributables for C++ and DirectX.
We had a developer leave and I'm trying to make myself familiar with his deployment process. The past developer would create two versions of his install. One was a update and the other was an install.
I see in the src code he has a .NSIS folder with the scripts already written.
How do I use those scripts to build our NSIS installers? I've looked at Visual Installer, but I don't see how to implement those scripts for the build process.
Edit
"He" is the old developer that left. I'm trying to push out a new build of the ACInstall.exe and ACPatch.exe. I've looked at NSIS online tutorials and they mostly talk about creating the script. I have the script but I'm not familiar with how to use it. ie what tool to run to build the ACInstall.exe.
Here are the files he created and how the project's explorer looks.
.nsi files are plain text files and the NSIS compiler (makensis.exe) will produce a .exe from a .nsi.
You need to install NSIS to get the NSIS compiler, Visual Installer just provides Visual Studio integration (syntax highlighting etc).
Anders, you can use a number of NSIS script editors, not sure if this is your requirement. You can use HM NIS, I think it's the better free, but it's a bit 'ole' (more than 8 years for sure). I hope this answer can be of help to anybody looking for the same answer.
I want to attach my own folder name to the "DefaultLocation" during msi installation (using VS 2005). Currently all programs installs at "C:\Program Files (x86)". I want to append some "xyz" path to the installation path during installation. So, once the user clicks next, the path for the installation should be "C:\Program Files (x86)\xyz".
Can anyone tell me how to do this in the windows installer.
The short answer is no, because here is nothing in Visual Studio setup projects to support that. You'd need the ability to change the target directory in the UI sequence after that dialog, that's what's missing.
VS setup projects are limited in their support for all the features of Windows Installer, so migrating to a different tool would be useful if this is the kind of customization you're looking for.
Could anyone tell you how to do this in Windows Installer? Technically yes. You'd need somebody who knows enough about the insides of MSI files generated by VS to design a solution (a custom action based off the Next button?) and change the MSI file manually to do it, and how to repeat that after every build (a post build script), and for you or your company to understand enough to fix it if it stops working. That doesn't seem practical compared to just using a tool that will let you do it. My apologies for the editorial but if VS doesn't support it your choices are limited.
I need to build CAB files for our Windows based inventory guns. We currently use a trial version of Visual Studio 2008. I am trying to find other alternatives that are less expensive so we can purchase licensed software and document the process. Being that I am not a developer, I want to better understand how these CAB files are constructed. What are the basic components of a CAB file in this scenario? When using Visual Studio, we simply create some folders, add files and create registry entries and build the CAB. I'd like to have a better understanding of the whole process so I can learn how to build this files using either free or more affordable tools. Any links or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
makecab.exe, located in c:\windows\system32
Documentation on MSDN about Cabinet Format and MakeCAB
and also COMPRESS command which something like MAKECAB little brother.