How to: Create Installation Components - High-Level Process 

These are the overall steps in creating and testing an installation component for one of your resource-dependent components. See the procedures referenced in this section for more information on each step.

To create an installation component

  1. For each component in your application that needs a system resource installed during deployment, add an installation component to your application. For more information, see How to: Add Installation Components to Your Projects.

  2. In the Installer1 class for your project, customize any properties or methods for which you want to override the defaults. For more information, see How to: Configure Installation Components or How to: Override Default Methods on Installation Components.

    NoteNote

    If you are working in the Microsoft .NET Framework SDK, you must instantiate the component installers in the constructor for the Installer1 class and add them to the list of components to install.

  3. Save and compile your application project.

  4. Create the deployment project for your project, and add your project's DLL to the Custom Action Editor. For more information, see Custom Actions Management in Deployment.

  5. Save and compile your deployment project.

  6. Deploy the project to the destination computer, and verify that your resource was created correctly. For more information, see Deploying Applications and Components.

    NoteNote

    You can also use the Microsoft Visual Studio tool installutil.exe to deploy the installation of the DLL you created in step 3, rather than creating and testing the deployment package.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Add Installation Components to Your Projects
How to: Configure Installation Components
How to: Override Default Methods on Installation Components