Silverlight Tools Tip: Offline Installation
Starting with RC0 and continuing through our RTW release of Silverlight 2 Tools for Visual Studio, we’ve moved the developer runtime installer into a downloadable dependency. This makes the Silverlight Tools chain installer smaller to download, but causes the install to always download the installer for the development runtime. We chose this method mainly so that any updates to the runtime will still work with the same Silverlight Tools installer. The drawback is that you have to have an Internet connection in order to install. But there’s a solution…
The installer package we use, which is the same as for Visual Studio 2008 SP1, has a flag which will download all of the required dependencies into a specified folder, containing an offline-installable set of packages. To do this, you simply need to run the chain installer (from a computer with an Internet connection) as follows: Silverlight_Tools.exe /createlayout <Full path to output folder, e.g. C:\foo>
After the installer finishes, you’ll find in the specified path (C:\foo in my example) that all of the contents have been downloaded and extracted, including the Silverlight 2 development runtime. You can copy this folder to any other machine and run SPInstaller.exe and it will no longer need to download the runtime.
[Update:]
Here is an alternative way to create an offline installable layout, in case the above doesn’t work (e.g. due to proxy issues). If you run the installer with the /x flag, it will extract the contents to a specified directory: Silverlight_Tools.exe /x:C:\foo
At this point, you can download the developer runtime separately (see https://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/tools.aspx for a link to the developer runtime) and copy it to this folder. Then run SPInstaller.exe as above.
Comments
Anonymous
October 19, 2008
Hi Jamlew, Thanks for this.I will surely try thisAnonymous
October 25, 2008
Silverlight 2.0 Immersivity: End of Week RecapAnonymous
November 04, 2008
Thanks a lot. I struggled and struggled and struggled. All our development machines do not have internet connectivity. And I had no way to go forward Thanks againAnonymous
November 05, 2008
My internet connection goes through a proxy, what parameter can i use to get through the proxy by using user name and passwordAnonymous
November 05, 2008
>My internet connection goes through a proxy, what parameter can i use to get through the proxy by using user name and password The installer will attempt to use the proxy settings in Internet Explorer. Do you have the settings correct in IE?Anonymous
November 05, 2008
>My internet connection goes through a proxy, what parameter can i use to get through the proxy by using user name and password >The installer will attempt to use the proxy settings in Internet Explorer. Do you have the settings correct in IE? yes Thanks a lot.Anonymous
November 07, 2008
akl: Can you email me a copy of the Silverlight Tools installer log? It can be found under your %temp% folder, and will be named similar to 'Silverlight Tools RTW_<YYYYMMDD>_<timestamp>.html'. My email address is jamlew (AT) microsoft [DOT] com ThanksAnonymous
May 13, 2009
Very nice. Tagged and passed around.Anonymous
August 09, 2009
Thanks, that solved my problem.Anonymous
October 01, 2009
but if I have internet connection to install Silverlight_Tools.exe ???Anonymous
October 01, 2009
but if I have internet connection to install Silverlight_Tools.exe ??? PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAnonymous
October 01, 2009
But if I do not have conección Internet to install Silverlight_Tools.exe ???Anonymous
October 10, 2009
Thanks! This saved me a lot of time for download & installation on multiple machinesAnonymous
October 19, 2009
Based on the comments above, I am installing on a network that does not have an internet connection. I can see that this has been discussed, but I don't see the actual answer.Anonymous
October 19, 2009
Hi Ace, You need to create the folder with the chainer contents via either of the methods explained above, on a machine with an Internet connection. Then, copy that folder to your other network (via a USB key, CD, or whatever), and run the SPInstaller.exe on the machine where you need to install Silverlight Tools.Anonymous
October 21, 2009
much simpler than all that: Run Silverlight_Tools.exe click then next button and wait ... then when it does fail [after 4 retries over many minutes], the installer says it failed, but you get a link to the log. click the link read IN DETAIL AT THE BOTTOM UP... the log lists the link and where it's downloading to. Simply copy the link [http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=127693] to Microsoft® Silverlight™ 2 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1. Then download the Silverlight.2.0_Developer.exe and copy it [sneaker-net as we call it] to the development machine. Then copy it into the directory the log said it was installing it into: %TEMP%Silverlight Tools RTW normally = to: C:Documents and Settings<your username>]Local SettingsTempSilverlight Tools RTW Now, enjoy and have fun coding offline! Dan "Silverlight in Sharepoint ROCKS!" WygantAnonymous
November 10, 2009
Thank you very much. It really helped. I suggest that this option is mentioned in Microsoft Website as well :-)Anonymous
January 05, 2010
Thanks a lot. Most of the corporates would have proxy enabled internet. I am surprised, Microsoft has still not given this as an alternative in their download section for SilverlightAnonymous
January 26, 2010
Thanks for the tip. Worked for Silverlight 3 Tools as well.Anonymous
January 26, 2010
Wowwww. thanks a lot..awesome workaround... thanks again dude..!Anonymous
February 08, 2010
JUST GREAT! thank you a lot man!Anonymous
March 24, 2010
That worked like a champ. Thank you very much.Anonymous
June 18, 2010
Thanks for the walkthrough...but it would be nice if Microsoft would provide this by default. I imagine many large-scale enterprises have proxies that require this process to install the tools, and most downloads for visual studio-related stuff has a full ISO download, non bootstrap. Don't see why this can't be included in that list. Oh well.Anonymous
July 25, 2010
Dan, Thanks a lot, It worked. Really... surprised that still Microsoft has not listed this altenative method.Anonymous
February 25, 2011
HI, I am following the instructions to download and extract the silverlight development tools and then use spInstaller to use the local files. The problem is that every time I run SPInstaller it still tries to download from the internet. How do I force it to use local files?Anonymous
February 25, 2011
Hi, Please note the updated section at the botton of the post. You can use the /x flag to extract the contents of the installer, then separately download and copy the Silveright Developer runtime installer into the same folder. At that point you can run SPInstaller.exe and it should no longer need to download the runtime.Anonymous
July 23, 2014
Missing link to get latest OFFLINE version. This MUST BE AT THE TOP OF ALL SILVERLIGHT WEB PAGES! There is no excuse for Microsoft HIDING the offline installers for Silverlight and ALL of its other products. Except of course, greed and laziness.