I have 4 different outlook addins and I want to make it in a single setup file by giving the user the option to select whatever addin they need during the installation.
How can I do this in Visual Studio Tools 2010.
As of now, I have created a setup file, which will install all the 4 addins at one single go.
Any kind of links to these kind of setup, or tips are needed in moving forward this issue.
Visual Studio doesn't support this. You need a setup authoring tool which allows you to use custom features and organize your resources using those features. A dialog editor would also help.
Here is the general approach:
create 4 features, one for each addin
move each addin resources into it's feature
use setup type dialog (Typical, Custom and Complete options) to allow the user to select the features he wants
if the setup authoring tool you are using has a dialog editor, you can use a custom dialog instead of setup type dialog (for example a button for each addin instead of a feature tree)
If you want a free solution, you can try WiX. It has a steep learning curve, but you can do what you want with it. A commercial solution is easier to use, but you have to purchase a license. Let me know if you want some recommendations.
Related
Visual studio 2013 has its own accessibility validation, to check the accessibility one has to click on the tools menu, then click Check Accessibility, my question is: it is possible to make this validation automatically with MSbuild or with another tool?
Thanks
I need to check websites (MVC projects)
You may also want to look at tenon.io (http://tenon.io/), they have an extension for VS2013.
Tenon differentiates from all the other tools by providing an API which can be leveraged to integrate automated testing in to the development process.
Karl Groves says it better than I could:
All of my projects use Grunt, ... Tenon automatically performs unit testing on its own code. When something goes wrong, Grunt stops and yells at you. You can even tie Grunt to pre-commit hooks. In such a workflow nothing goes live without all your Grunt tasks running successfully.
Imagine, an enterprise-wide tool that can be used in each phase, that works directly as part of your existing workflows and toolsets. Imagine tying such a tool to everything from the very lowest level tasks all the way through to the build and release cycles and publication of content. That’s why I created Tenon.
While Tenon has a web GUI, the web GUI is actually a client application of the real Tenon product. In fact, internally Asa and I refer to and manage Tenon as a series of different things: Tenon Admin, Tenon UI, and Tenon (the API). The real deal, the guts, the muscle of the whole thing is the Tenon API which allows direct command line access to testing your code.
The beauty of Tenon is that because it is essentially an API, it can plug in to anything, Sublime, Webstorm, Netbeans, Notepad (probably not), Visual Studio!
Tenon.io Visual Studio add-on, compatible with 2013/2015 and 2013 Community Edition
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2015/03/03/improving-html-accessibility-with-visual-studio-extensions.aspx
The only catch, it’s not free for corporate users and it’s in the cloud (unless you pay Enterprise pricing for a local install). Pricing info: http://www.tenon.io/pricing.php
Karl Groves writes about his motivation for creating Tenon: http://www.karlgroves.com/2014/03/13/everything-you-know-about-accessibility-testing-is-wrong-part-4/
I think you need the AccChecker Console
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/jj191809(v=vs.85).aspx
If you want API access to this you should read AccChecker API
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/jj191808(v=vs.85).aspx
Overview here:
UI Accessibility Checker
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/hh920985(v=vs.85).aspx
The closer solution I have found so far regarding this topic is in Visual Studio 2015 by adding the Web Accessibility Checker extension from Mads Kristensen, which is also free. The extension can be found at the Visual Studio Marketplace website. You can see the usage instructions within the description of the extension. This is an example of what you get once build the solution and tap on the Error List panel:
I hope can help.
I've created a visual studio extension with some nice refactoring features via a Code Refactoring (CodeRefactoringProvider) roslyn project, but there isn't really anything to it in terms of adding tooltips or menu items or doing something on startup.
If I wanted to do something like add a settings menu or tell the user that they're on a trial version, how/when could I even do it? Even though I'm working in a vsix, events don't seem to be exposed anywhere.
Do CodeRefactoringProviders run in a bit of a sandbox? Because I like the way it consumes my class, shows the user a preview and it fits into the editor amazingly, but of course I'd like more control because after all, the root of what you create is a VSIX which can do almost anything in the visual studio environment.
I'm sure I could limit the # of refactorings and show a popup.. but I'm fairly certain people would send death threats.
You can add other elements in just the same way you would in any other vsix in a Roslyn vsix. There are various ways to do this, such as creating a Visual Studio Package, using an ITextViewCreationListener, etc.
One sample that I created showed how to integrate a Tools Options page with a Roslyn code issue at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsdesktop/Roslyn-Code-Issue-with-84d792dd.
Looking at VS2010 installer I saw a way to hook in macros and created a test macro but my test macro didn't show up in the list. I also briefly tested InstallShield LE but it didn't meet all my requirements and I went away for a couple of days and when I returned it said the project had expired. This is a simple one-off install so I'd rather not spend the $$ for InstallShield pro.
What is the best way to call some custom code and display a dialog box pre/post install within VS2010 or VS2008 installer?
Visual Studio setup projects do not support this. To use custom actions before or after the actual installation you can use a different setup authoring tool.
If you want a free solution you can try WiX. It has a steep learning curve, but it gets the job done.
For commercial tools you can see this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_installation_software
This isn't a really scalable solution per say but a useful hack when you don't want to spend money for the full featured tools. You can build your MSI using a Visual Studio Deployment Project or InstallShield LE project and then use post build steps to perform automation to modify the MSI to do things it wasn't authored to do.
If you understand the MSI table data you can edit the MSI in Orca, create a transform, author your dialog and then generate the transform file. Then everytime you build your MSI you just use a postbuild command to apply that transform to your MSI as if VS authored it.
You might, cough cough, be able to find someone around here to help you do that on the cheap.
I am building an installer for my windows app and have done this through a setup/installer project in visual studio.
I was wondering how to customize he UI of the finish dialog box? I want to add a couple of check-boxes and launch an app after the user closes the finish box.
Is there a way to do this in Visual studio itself or does it require any other tools? If other tools are required then are any of them free?
Thanks
Kapil
Visual studio deployment projects give you some standard templated dialog boxes.
If none of these templates meet your requirements, you can create your own custom UI and use an installer class to control the workflow.
To launch an app at end of the installation you would again probably have to override a method in your installer class.
If all this seems like hard work, it's certainly worth looking at something like INNO Setup or WIX.
Inno Setup is free and has the ability to run things when the install is complete.
I'm trying to create a web application project template for everyone to use here at work that will minimize the amount of work that we have to do to create a new application with all our normal stuff, and I was thinking that it would be nice to do some setup stuff (add some records to a database) when the developer creates a new application (only if they tell it to), and I would like to do it through a dialog like the one that pops up for unit testing when you create a new ASP.Net MVC project. Is there any way to write a custom dialog that will pop up when you create a new project from the our custom project template? I'm assuming they're just using some public interface for the MVC unit testing dialog, right?
We're still on Visual Studio 2005, though, so maybe something like that isn't supported until 2008?
You're going to need a little VSX for this (Visual Studio Extensibility). Install the Visual Studio SDK and look for samples about the IWizard interface.
That may be all you need. However, if you need a more extensive and powerful experience around custom creation of projects and project items, and easy addition of context-sensitive commands to Visual Studio, then take a look at the Guidance Automation Extensions and Guidance Automation Toolkit.