Product Release Essentials

A pleasant and robust setup experience forms a lasting impression in your users’ minds about your Visual Studio integration product. An unpleasant setup experience also forms a lasting impression, so following best practices in setup development and testing is worth the investment.

Developing Windows Installer Setup Packages

Windows Installer is the recommended installation and configuration service for Windows and for Visual Studio integration products.

Note

The Visual Studio SDK documentation on installing Visual Studio integration products builds on Windows Installer concepts, but it does not cover Windows Installer itself. For links to relevant sections of the Windows Installer documentation, refer to the table below.

In the context of setup, component refers to a Windows Installer component. Components contain resources like files and registry entries, and are installed and removed as a unit.

Task	For more information, see
Learn more about Windows Installer.	Windows Installer
Learn more about Windows Installer components.	Component Management Component Management [Windows Installer]
Determine your VSPackage's system requirements.	Detecting System Requirements
Learn how to register a VSPackage in a setup package.	VSPackage Registration Commands That Must Be Run After Installation
See a sample installation package.	IronPython Integration Setup Sample

Supporting Side-by-Side Products

Side-by-side (sometimes shortened to SxS) refers to the ability to have multiple versions of the same product installed, and even running, simultaneously. For Visual Studio integration products, it also refers to the fact that Visual Studio itself supports side-by-side execution.

Task	For more information, see
Learn about supporting multiple versions of Visual Studio in your Visual Studio integration product.	Side-By-Side Installation Considerations for VSPackages Choosing Between Shared and Versioned VSPackages Component Management
Learn about supporting multiple versions of your Visual Studio integration product.	Choosing Between Shared and Versioned VSPackages Registering File Name Extensions for Side-By-Side Deployments Detecting System Requirements Commands That Must Be Run After Installation

Testing Your Visual Studio Integration Product

The Visual Studio Integration Test (VSIT) suite is a series of tests that verifies that a VSPackage correctly integrates into Visual Studio. VSIT does not test a VSPackage’s functionality, but helps ensure that a VSPackage does not adversely affect other Visual Studio functionality. For more information, see Visual Studio Integration Tests.