How to create a custom WPF interface to my Setup Project? - c#

In my company we are using NSIS to develop our installers, however, the NSIS tool is so hard to maintenance and develop.
We are searching how to develop the installer using Visual Studio, but we would like to create our own custom interface with WPF for the Setup Project. Is it possible?
If it is, how could I do this?
P.S.: I don't know if it could matter, but our installer need to take a lot of dlls, create registry keys, install and start Services, run database scripts.

Google is your friend...
For standard setup project with custom WPF screens, there are several tutorials out there:
Tutorial
The MSDN documentation:
Role based installer
Customization of installer
Alternatives
As comments said, there is also Wix or Inno setup.
If you want to keep it full c#, you wan try Wix# (MIT license).

Related

How can I create an installer for a WPF application as well as a ASP.net application?

I have a Visual Studio 2017 project that contains a WPF application and a ASP.net application that interact through a database.
I am currently using this to create an installer for the entire project.
The problem I'm having is that I can successfully create an installer for the WPF application, but not the ASP.net application. Is there a way I can create an installer that installs both applications on a separate computer?
Thanks
Usually, you have to choose a tool or set of tools to generate an installer for your projects to be deployed in your users'/consumers' computers. There are lots of available options. Some are free, some are paid (and quite expensive).
Free ones include WiX Toolset and InstallForge. Paid ones tend to be a lot easier to use and offer more ready-to-use features, and examples of these are InstallShield and Advanced Installer.
I personally use WiX, as it offers quite interesting features, it is free, and has a huge comunity. On the other hand, its learning curve can be quite steep, depending on your specific needs.
Many other options are available. For a simpler (although much less flexible) solution for WinForms and WPF projects, check out ClickOnce.
Maybe you can try Inno Setup: http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php

Wix Bootstrapper multi-language

I have a Wix installation set up. I am using Wix Bootstrapper to make windows. All installation windows are made by their own. I need to localize them, I can not solve this question in any way.
Not a lot of time, this will just be a bunch of links, hopefully enough for you to help yourself.
WiX Burn localization: Maybe have a look at this project on github for localization of your WiX Bundle (which I haven't really tried yet - this is someone else's sample): https://github.com/frederiksen/Classic-WiX-Burn-Theme.
I don't think this sample has localized MSI files, just the WiX Bundle. I am not sure.
MSI Localization: WiX has some support for standard dialog sets in a number of languages, but you need to localize your own, custom dialogs. I have seen some problems with these dialogs, but I usually get things working using the "Mondo" set.
I lack a full overview, but let me try to give you some pointers:
WiX Tutorial:
Localizing your custom setup dialogs
User Interface In General
Localization
User Interface revisited
More on custom dialogs
WiX Documentation:
How To: User Interface and Localization
WixUI Dialog Library
Using WixUIExtension (standard UI):
What else do I need to show the license aside from WixUILicenseRtf? (no Visual Studio)
WiX installer msi not installing the Winform app created with Visual Studio 2017 (Visual Studio)
IsWiX: Just trowing this is - I don't think there is much localization here, but there are some sample test projects that are useful. Also, you can find more advanced WiX samples and tutorials from the IsWix project. Essentially a GUI front end for generating WiX MSI files. Here are the actual tutorials. And the tool itself: https://github.com/iswix-llc/iswix. And the blog.

How to create a custom installation process for .Net application?

I recently created a Windows application project using C#. I have completed all the codings. Now i have to deploy the project. So, i created the SETUP of the project using the visual studio's SETUP PROJECT from the Menu. It works fine, i dont have any kind of issues with it. But the genreral setup i get after deploying the poroject is MSi and it looks very simple.
But the thing i need to know is that, is there any way to create a custom setup? The thing i mean to say is that i want to add logo for my project inside the installer. And certain things like during the installation process, the wizzard should ask for user name and password and few more things like these. For eg: if you are insalling a software like visual studio or some other software the installation wizzard is very catchy and the look & feel is good. Similarly i want to get a setup for my project.
Im not sure how to achieve this.
I tried using the installer class of the visual studio project and im not sure if its the correct option for me so instead of wasting time i just thought to ask it here?
I thought that there may be few third party tools for achieveing this. I tried InnoSetup 5.2 but there i have to write programs manually which is similar to pascal.
Also i heard about the tool called as InstallShield, but it costs and im looking for a free alternative.
Is there any third party tool or software for creating SETUP of visual studio projects.? Or is there any method which i can follow to obtain my customized setup?
You can use a Microsoft Setup project or WIX (easily integrate with Visual Studio).
Both are free.
You can do almost all of your customization in setup project by adding custom actions.
WIX (window installer xml) is the better option. You can do a complete customization from wix but it take some time to understand as it is totally based on XML. Microsoft office 2007 and later setups are based on wix.
The difference between wix and Setup project is that you have more control over the GUI of setup in wix than setup project and wix allow much more customization then setup project.
Take a look at this step by step tutorial for wix.
go through topics here Deployment Tasks and Walkthroughs - setup projects are very flexible especially with custom actions. you definitely can setup your own images and tune UI.
If you use Visual Studio MSI
For the first question about adding Icon (based on SplashBitmap), see this MSDN page.
For the second question about authentification input, refer to this other MSDN page.
You can especially use Action personalized, you can follow these steps:
Select the Installer project custom actions in the Solution Explorer. On the View menu, point to Editor, and choose Custom Actions.
The Custom Actions Editor appears.
In the Custom Actions Editor, select the Install node. On the Action menu, choose Add Custom Action.
In the dialog box, select an item in the project, double-click Application Folder.
Select the Primary output from OpenWeb (Active).
Click OK to close the dialog box.
In the Properties window, select the InstallerClass property and set its value to false.
In the Build menu, choose Build Custom Action Installer.

How to create an installer and uninstaller for a Windows Forms application

I created an installer for my Windows Forms application and I added the project output to programs menu. But now what I want is 'I should have a folder in programs menu in that it should contain both install and uninstall options'.
Please help me. Thanks in advance.
The easiest way is to create a Setup and Deployment project in Visual Studio.
I have to agree with Sir Richard's answer, but I wanted to add the instructions on how add an uninstaller using the Setup and Deployment project found in Visual Studio.
Here's a useful link you can work on: How to add a Uninstall option in Visual Studio Setup project without writing code
If you have advanced scenarios that the Setup and Deployment project can't handle, I'd advise looking into WiX.
WiX is an extremely mature Microsoft opensource project, having first launched in 2004 and is still active today. It even provides a VS extension to assist you with getting started and intellisense for the configuration.
Be warned though: WiX primarily uses XML files that use MSI's domain language. It's certainly not a tool you use if "create an installer" wasn't allocated specifically in your project plan.
You can try with NSIS, is open source and very easy...
"NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) is a professional open source system to create Windows installers. It is designed to be as small and flexible as possible and is therefore very suitable for internet distribution."
in his website you can find tutorials and examples, the link is: http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page
I hope this help you!

Can anyone provide a good "idiot's guide" to creating an installer in VS2008 (C#) Pro?

I have Visual C# 2008 Professional and have developed the first half of a C# application (console mode) with the second half in progress now (GUI).
I'm looking for an easy path to creating an installer for it. What are the steps that need to be taken to produce a professional installer?
There's a similar question here regarding the Express edition but I have Pro, and I would like as much as possible to stick with just the standard VS stuff (if you think you can convince me that a third party installer creator is much better than a VS-only solution, give it a shot, by all means).
Keep in mind that I have no interest in upgrading to VS2010 yet, even if it's a hundred times easier to create an installer. That can come later, when the revenue starts rolling in :-)
Also be aware that the GUI component of this application is a totally separate executable from the console part. The console part is a simple "open file 1, do some work on it, write file 2" type and the GUI is a fairly standard "open file, do some stuff" beast so there's no tricky or wildly undocumented behaviour happening.
Basically, I'm looking for (at least) the following:
professional looking installer.
ability to specify where the application files go.
changes to the registry to allow double-clicks on my file extension to open the GUI app with the file as an argument.
needs to install everything required (my stuff, .Net if required, and so on).
This might be a bit more rant than answer but here it goes.
If there is one thing severely broken with Windows client software it is the deployment of applications.
My experience comes from working on NovaMind - Even though I have spent weeks over the years on setup issues, I am by no means an expert in setup technology and I try to focus on our actual product whenever possible. We have used InnoSetup, Visual Studio Setup Project 2008/2010 and finally we have switched to the WiX + Tools approach.
How do you install an application nowadays?
Web Apps: Enter a URL in a browser to get to a web app.
Mac: Drag the downloaded file (same for x64 and x86) to the Applications icon on the Mac. Done.
Windows: Download the right file (user needs to know about x64 and x86 architecture), execute it. Click ‘Next’ a dozen times, wait for the UAC to show, click yes and then hope that the installer did the right thing.
I think that if Windows had a better deployment system, a sane marketplace/app store and a proper live update feature, web apps might never have gotten that popular in the first place. Of course that’s an exaggeration but I believe a lot of damage has been done to the Windows applications ecosystem by not providing a sane, usable deployment model and even now Microsoft seems to pay very little attention to this problem.
How do you update applications nowadays?
Web Apps: No need. It is up to date.
Mac: No inbuilt magic but there is a widely used and powerful solution called Sparkle.
Windows: You better roll your own because there is nothing substantial out there.
ClickOnce should have changed all of this but failed to be usable for real commercial applications.
Here is the rundown:
InnoSetup and other script based installations are simple but cannot produce a .msi file — Some companies require .msi files to automate network deployments. You will also need to have a Windows Installer (.msi) based setup if you want to get the Windows Logo certification.
Visual Studio Setup Project 2008/2010 gives you the basics easily and you can configure a bunch of things but once you want to do the unthinkable like use a high quality icon or include a changing set of files into your setup, you’re screwed. We also had to manually fix the PackageCode and ProductCode every single time we built an update since Visual Studio managed to somehow mess up the assembly versions and would leave an older assembly when updating, thus corrupting the application.
WiX is the de-facto way to create setups on Windows and even the Microsoft Office Setup is supposedly created with WiX. WiX is not simple. There are books available for WiX!
Unfortunately, WiX alone is still not a good solution. We use the dotNetInstaller bootstrapper project to ensure the .NET Framework is installed and to wrap the .msi file and the bootstrapper into a single .exe file that people can download.
With all this you are mostly fine. There are always strange cases were customers don’t have the Windows Installer installed (and thus cannot run the embedded .msi file) or where the .NET Framework installation fails.
Things we haven’t been able to do so far:
Localizing our installer!
Providing a single download for both x64 and x86 — at the moment we only create a x86 installer because we don’t want our users to think about x64 vs. x86.
Have a nice setup UI that also works with high DPI settings. I think this might just be a thing that is not supported in MSI setup.
There is a free product called SharpSetup which seems to address some of these problems and allows you to write a Winforms based UI, but SharpSetup does not come with a bootstrapper and requires the .NET Framework — you can however write your own C++ code to react in this situation.
For live updates we have rolled our own solution and after many issues it is working okay.
You might also want to listen to Scott Hanselman’s podcast episode with Rick Brewster were they talk about the setup and deployment of Paint.NET — While I congratulate Rick and the Paint.NET team on their good setup, the necessity of such a complex solution saddens me.
If you absolutely need to use .msi then I would recommend WiX to anyone who wants to create an installer on Windows, but in the end I am extremely frustrated with the deployment situation on Windows. I have wasted weeks of my time over the years with silly setup issues. With setup you can only lose. You won’t win any happy customers because your setup works but you will lose and frustrate a lot of them if it doesn’t.
Another option is using Inno Setup. It allows you to fully customize installations, where to stick files on the target machine, modify the registry, and all that jazz. If you're willing to spend a bit more time learning a bit about the scripting required to achieve the results you want, it's a very powerful tool. (fulfills all of your requirements and much more) And most importantly, it's free =)
I've been using Inno Setup for all of my larger .NET programs. When the installer runs, it checks to see if .NET is installed and if not, downloads and installs it. As well, I've modified registry and made associations with extensions like you mentioned. Including DLL's with the installer is simple as well - Inno will lump all of the required files into a single executable that takes care of everything.
Additionally, since Inno has been around since 1997, a number of editors have arisen that help make the scripting process a lot easier.
I use Advanced Installer, it is dead simply, and I use it, because of the limitations of VS.
http://www.advancedinstaller.com/
The "downside" is that for fully automatic installation of dependencies you have to pay ;-)
If you want to create your installer fully in Visual Studio, but don't mind using external tools to help you in that job then have a look at a program of mine called SharpSetup. It allows you to build GUI using C#/WinForms, whereas backend is WiX based (which in turn means using WIndows Installer).
Visual Studio 2008 has built-in setup/installer support.
Add a new project to your solution, and select the 'Setup Project' option from the 'Other project types > Setup and Deployment' category.
Have a look at Windows Installer Deployment overview, and a step-by-step walkthrough
If you know scripting languages you can check out NSIS as an alternative to VS. There's enough documentation that you can copy paste their example installer and replace their file locations with your own.
While I'm not install expert, I've used Wix successfully. It's complicated to say the least.
I don't see any of these products being mentioned that I've seen clients use successfully.
http://www.installaware.com/
http://www.flexerasoftware.com/products/installshield.htm
http://www.wise.com/Products/Installations/WiseInstallationStudio.aspx
All provide localization, file/app for double click association, Framework bootstrapping and target location to the best of my knowledge. InstallAware and Wise provide some form of autoupdate support.

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