I'm using InstallShield Limited Edition on VS2015.
I found several articles talking about an XML File Changes view, like this article, for instance.
However, I can't locate the view in LE. It might be due to the articles being a bit old and for a different version, or it might be that LE doesn't have this feature. I haven't found an article with the specific differences in features between the various versions of InstallShield, so my question is, can we do XML File Changes in LE? If yes, which view should I use to do it?
I installed InstallShield Express Edition, and while navigating the Help, I found the article entitled Upgrading to the Premier or Professional Editions of InstallShield. In it, you'll find the following:
Features that Are in Only the Premier and Professional Editions
(...)
Ability to modify text files or XML files—Use the Text File Changes view or the XML File Changes view to configure files that you want to modify on the target system at run time.
So this answers my question. Hope it helps someone else out there.
Related
I have an old InstallShield installer which i believe was made using InstallShield 2012. I don't have the install script code for the same. I only have exe of the installer with me.
I need to create a new installer containing some of the same features from old installer, so is there any way by which i can get the setup.rul file of the installer from its exe?
I did some googling but got no help.
Setup.exe Extraction: If you run an extraction of your setup.exe, do you get an *.ins file?
Programmatically extract contents of InstallShield setup.exe
Extract MSI from EXE
Decompiler: I believe there are some hacky solutions to decompile *.ins to *.rul. I do not have such a tool, nor have I ever tried one and I can't recall seeing any trace of them for a whole decade. Perhaps Installshield support can help?
Alternatives: Off the top of my head: Contact Installshield support, they might have better advice? Check with Installshield community? Check with Stefan Kruger - Installshield consultant? Check any source repositories you can find based on setup.exe timestamp? (search for *.rul, *.ism, or similar as relevant). Check backups? Check backups of setup developer PC? Check github.com even? (for samples of similar tasks). Check external media, email attachments, network shares, etc...
I have a project that was created using VS2102 Premium. When a co-worker tries to open it with VS2012 Professional he gets a "Needs migration" message for the project. Is this due to the different flavor of VS2012?
I wouldn't have thought so for most projects, however if you've used some feature of VS Premium that is not present in VS Professional, then I guess this is the response you'll get.
If you open a project from a previous version (eg 2010) then it'll offer to upgrade the solution.
You can manually edit the project, its only an XML file. Create a new blank project to see the structure and then use winmerge or similar to copy relevant lines across.
Mylyn is a task oriented plugin that allows for example to assign a set of files to a task. Is there a Mylyn type plugin for Visual Studio?
Tasktop has just announced that it is bringing the productivity of Mylyn into Visual Studio! The beta version that is being released will support bringing tasks from HP ALM, Quality Center, and Bugzilla. It includes Mylyn's Task List and Task Editor. The next level of support, which will include compatibility with all existing Mylyn connectors, will be delivered after this beta. Further down the road Tasktop will also be delivering context capture and focus within the Visual Studio IDE.
The beta release will be happening end of November 2010.
See the recent blog post for more details.
David Shepherd, Tasktop Technologies http://www.twitter.com/davidcshepherd
The closest I've found is Tasktop, by the people that created Mylyn, but it's a standalone application that doesn't integrate with Visual Studio.
(Resharper is irrelevant).
Not even close to mylyn, but here is an open source addin for visual studio that helps to assign a list of source files to a "session" (you could think of the session as a "task")
http://dsmaddin.codeplex.com/
i'm not aware of anything open source but i do know that team system is setup to support this type of workflow.
resharper might also have features you are looking for but, again, not foss
I asked that question to the VS.NET Development team in Teched 2008.
She said that they've notice about Mylyn, but are still looking on it.
Task focusing plugin is not yet ready in VS.NET environment.
You may be interested in this news from Tasktop: http://tasktop.com/blog/tasktop/eclipse-mylyn-microsoft-visual-studio
I'll second tasktop. The newest version especially looks nice. Like orip said, it doesn't provide VS integration, but there's a Firefox extension which should be pretty nice... beats using Eclipse purely for Mylyn.
I've recently released (commercial) Task Canvas extension for Visual Studio 2015 that supports tasks with assigned sets of documents and code fragments.
Microsoft's vexing dumping of vdproj install projects in VS 2012 leads one to try Installshield LE which is sort of built into VS2012. Sadly, it creates installers that do not work in any way shape or form with 64 bit.
So for instance clicking the Office 2010 installed checkbox only makes a prerequisite for 32 bit Office. It fails to detect 64 bit.
After a lot of chickenless head exploration of Installshield the bottom line is:
1) You need the Professional or Premiere version in order to deal with 64 bit.
2) You need to edit their provided condition to make a compound one that ORs all the guids of Office that you are interested in together as it only checks for one of the many out of the box. This details the structure of the GUIDS: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2186281?wa=wsignin1.0. I found it helpful to install various versions in a VM and then using regedit to see what the GUID ends up being.
This post is so that someone can actually discover this with a Google search, instead of it being hidden behind a paywall / private support site.
Update October '13 AlBear
There is a beta version of installshield LE for VS2012/13
To build x64 installation packages check on the help files
Look for "64 Bit" .
The way InstallShiel LE recognizes x64 target is by either defining the [INSTALLDIR] property as one of the 64 bit Folder or by defining at least one of the setup components as 64 Bit.
This works as I built an Excel 2013 Add that loads at startup and works fine.
For the Prerequisite for VSTO to work: You need to change file size and hash a it looks like the recommendations from Microsoft article "Deploying Office solutions vsto 2013" are outdated and the XML code recommended has the wrong file size and hash. Not too difficult to fix. However I think that Microsoft is unfortunately going through a period of crisis and this failure to provide reasonable support is uncharted territory .......
Cheers
InstallShield and WiX is like Visual Studio using VB.NET and SharpDevelop using C#. Just as those tools both create EXE's and DLL's using IL code but different language providers,
InstallShield and WiX both create Windows Installer databases using different languages. Just as a VB EXE can consume a C# DLL, an InstallShield MSI can consume a WiX Merge Modules. This gives you the best of both worlds.
The thing to understand is a VSTO AddIn installer isn't a 64bit MSI, it's a 32bit MSI that deploys an AnyCPU DLL with registry entries for either 32bit or 64bit Office. It's the bitness of Office, ultimately, that determines the bitness of your AddIn.
I have a template that I've used for a dozen customers. It uses InstallShield Limited Edition and it's Preq Bootstrapper to lay down all the dependencies and consumes a merge module authored is WiX and IsWiX (CodePlex). Otherwise ISLE is just a container for the UI and it's one feature.
The merge module takes care of all the dependency detection, gating logic, laying down files, installing certificates, setting registry values and so on.
Some more details can be found at:
VSTO 4 ( 2010 ) Lessons Learned
Office 2010 Bitness Pain
Apparently the small print referenced here should have been one clue: Does InstallShield Limited Edition Support 64 bit Installer?
The current Office prerequisite in Installshield is also misleadingly worded. It should really be "Office 2010 Home & Professional 32 bit".
Perhaps they intend to upgrade it over time to be comprehensive or perhaps everyone has to go through the same hassle to fix it for a few cases they care about. The support guy claimed there are too many GUIDS for all the combinations of versions, bitness, releases etc.
Home & Student, Home & Professional, Professional, Office 2010 Professional Plus License
32bit, 64bit, Languages mangled in there, Service Packs, etc. Depending on the set you care about the number of GUIDS is rather large.
I need some guidance on how to have SpecFlow installed on my Visual Studio 2010 development machine which is also leveraged for SharePoint 2010 development.
The .feature extensions causes some bad behavior...
I just posted a version of SpecFlow that resolves this issue. You can get more info in this post.
What I had to do to resolve the issue was download the source and change the extension for the feature files to .sfeature.
I think the problem here might be that SharePoint 2010 and SpecFlow make use of the .feature file extension. I did some research into this and found a SpecFlow Google group query about a similar problem. The answer given to the user with the problem was:
Hi, I'm sure you know the SharePoint
project better then me. Do you see
any conceptual idea how this conflict
could be resolved? What parts are
conflicting, the syntax coloring or
the generation? Is the SharePoint
".feature" file can also be placed in
a normal c#/vbnet project?
Tips for
manual workarounds: to switch off the
automatic recognition of the .feature
file for the
genrator:
- rename key ".feature" to ".featureX" at "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE
\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Generators{FAE04EC1-301F-11D3-
BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}.feature" (this is
for C# projects)
you can still set the generation manually in VS by specifying
"SpecFlowSingleFileGenerator" for the
"custom tool" property of the file
to switch off syntax coloring:
remove (or rename) the shortcut at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual
Studio
10.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\TechTalk\SpecFlow
Br, Gaspar
Maybe you could try the registry hack mentioned above and that might let you use SPecFLow with SharePoint?
The original thread can be found here:
http://groups.google.com/group/specflow/browse_thread/thread/4e6a80f3aa3624c2?pli=1