Deploying VB 2005 applications via .MSI?

[Ryan]

Is there any way to save a VB 2005 created application as an .MSI install
file? The only method I see is to publish as a .EXE. Curious because I
want to push out an application with Group Policy.

Thanks,
Ryan

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

Is there any way to save a VB 2005 created application as an .MSI install
file? The only method I see is to publish as a .EXE. Curious because I
want to push out an application with Group Policy.

Create a setup project for your application which contains the executable
file. This setup project's output file is in MSI format.

 

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hello Ryan,

As Tim has suggested, you can create a setup project (in the same solution)
which dedicated to creating the install program(exe and msi) package for
your VS 2005 application(actually this is available in VS 2003) also. Here
is a walkthrough article:

#Walkthrough: Deploying a Windows Application
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/vsintro7/html/vbtskcreatinginstaller
foryourapplication.asp?frame=true

and one cool feature of VS 2005 is that it provide built-in bootstrapper
support (existing ones or add our custom ones), this can help our setup
program conveniently add any prerequistis components:

#Authoring a Custom Bootstrapper Package for Visual Studio 2005
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa730839(vs.80).aspx

In addition, here is a FAQ article about deploying a VB.NET application:

#Deploying Visual Basic .NET Applications (March 22, 2005)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats/transcripts/vstudio/05_0322_dn_vbnet.aspx

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead



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[Ryan]

Thanks everyone for the quick responses. This should work just fine.

 

[Ryan]

Well I spoke too soon What I am trying to do is push out a 3rd party
..EXE installation file via Group Policy. So my VB 2005 application should
do nothing but kick off the .EXE. I have an application that does this.
However, once I put it in an .MSI file my program must be installed and ran.
So technically it's installing 2 programs. Not sure if this is even
possible.

 

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Thanks for your reply Ryan,

Well, I've got your actual concern here. Since the "exe" setup has been
well packaged by 3rd party, it would be hard to unpack it since it is
purely a binary file. Yes, you're right that directly use a new setup
project(and call the exe in the setup project) will result to two installed
programs. I'm not sure how is the 3rd party originally produce the
setup.exe package, but you can try launch the setup.exe and look for a
temporary msi file in your temp folder(%tmp%). This trick is mentioned in
the following thread:

http://www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t9632.html

You can try it to see whether this works.

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead



This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Ryan]

Thank you Steven. Your trick worked perfectly and we are now in the process
of pushing out the 3rd party software via Group Policy.

Ryan