Illustrated Windows Installer production software installation package

You may be puzzled by the applications and components you are developing, because in traditional ways, you need to write complex installation scripts. The purpose of this article is to help. NET programmers are familiar with using very simple and convenient tools to publish their own applications without having to write installation scripts. Microsoft's. NET installation publishing platform to simplify this to a few simple clicks, it provides self-learning, simple-driven wizard way. Many use visual Studio. NET programmer did not take full advantage of the VS-Band Windows Installer tool and chose other tools. In fact, it is very simple to use.

Features of Windows Installer

• Compared to the traditional scripting based installation tool, it is based on a data-driven model that provides all of the installation data and instructions within a single package

• It supports self-healing features-programs can be automatically reinstalled

• It provides the ability to fall back to a step during installation

Create a publishing project

Visual Studio.NET provides four types of templates for publishing projects:

• Installation Engineering: Creating installation packages for windows-based applications

• Merge Module engineering (. MSM): Package components that can be shared by multiple programs

· Web installation project: Creating an installation package for a Web application

· Cab project (. cab): Creating a CAB file

At the same time, the Setup Wizard also provides the help steps that accompany the creation of a publishing project:

• For an installation project, the files that need to be installed are published to a program directory on the target computer

• For a Web installation project, the files that need to be installed are published to a virtual directory on the Web server

Note: If you create a standard release project and then plan to publish it to the Web, you must re-create a new project.

Five Step Production Program installation package

Step one: Open the VS IDE and select File->new->setup and Deployment Projects. Select Setup Wizard. Give the file name and storage directory of the project. As shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1