What is the best way to build a setup project on my build box?

Rob Bean 20 Reputation points
2023-03-21T22:32:57.8633333+00:00

I maintain an old project(a .vdproj file), created 10-15 years ago. The project creates two files for us, a setup.exe and a .msi. The setup files drop some dll's and a couple of .exe's into a folder and they create a couple of Windows services to run the two .exe's. I now need to build it for the first time in many years, and I'm running into problems.

We no longer have the old server used to build the app, so I can't see how it was built previously. If memory serves, we installed Visual Studio on the old build box, we invoked devenv.exe, and passed the solution file as a param. I tried that, and it worked for me, but we would rather not install Visual Studio on our build box, as it's a relatively big footprint, and it seems installing there would require another license.

I tried using MSBuild to build the setup project. I got a warning(MSB4078) which let me know that MSBuild doesn't work with .vdproj files. I then tried dotnet.exe. It doesn't seem to recognize the project file format. I also tried using VS Community's devenv, because that would probably not require another license, but Community ignored my .vdproj like it was not there. It said it could not find the file, and it printed out help for devenv.

What is the standard, or best way to build one of these projects?

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  1. RLWA32 39,451 Reputation points
    2023-03-21T23:25:19.75+00:00

    Installer projects (.vdproj) for current versions of Visual Studio require that you install an extension. After it is installed you should be able to use devenv.exe as before.

    For VS2022

    Microsoft Visual Studio Installer Projects 2022

    For VS2017 and VS2019

    Microsoft Visual Studio Installer Projects

    1 person found this answer helpful.

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