Chris Smith - Generic Bootstrapper in Visual Studio 2005
- Posted: Jun 20, 2005 at 11:56 PM
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We gave a camcorder to Mike Sampson who went over to his coworker, Chris Smith, a software developer/test on the Visual Basic team, and asked him all about the generic bootstrapper that's in Visual Studio 2005.
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"it's just going to... crashed.", funny, never mind.
You can't build the redists into setup.exe but you can still just ship one file if you use the homesite feature (download the pre-reqs from the package author location) or a components URL (put all the packages in a seperate location from the bootstrapper). With these, all you have to do is ship the bootstrapper and it will dowload all the prerequisites it needs.
How is this like make at all? Make is a build script tool. Sure people have overloaded it to install after building but it doesn't download and install prerquisite packages before installing.
Am I missing something?
Should have been available a few years ago already though... Man, sure would have made life much easier!
@Orbit86: stop bugging us with your Longhorn obsession please, there are far more important things with higher priority now.
You should include a feature where all the stuff can be bundled into one file. I mean all the prerequisits are bundled with the setup in one file.
That's required very often. There is people (and companies) out there not letting setup go to the internet and download some files from somewhere.
But the tool is quite cool. I like the possibility to create own setup bootstrapper.
We thought about editing the video, but figured the more 'candid' demo would be best. Note however that that bug is already fixed in the latest CTP release.
My MSDN blog. This isn't totally dedicated to the Generic Bootstrapper, but if you have a question about some odd corner case or are interested in learning about what goes on behind the scenes check it out:
http://blogs.msdn.com/chrsmith
A GotDotNet workspace devoted to housing custom packages for Microsoft packages which aren't shipping with VS 2005, like the 1.1 FX.
http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=7e8e8cbd-b447-4a9d-a984-9379d1a0c190
The Bootstrapper Manifest Generator GotDotNet project. This app should help you create even the most complex manifests.
http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=ddb4f08c-7d7c-4f44-a009-ea19fc812545
When the Bootstrapper is done installing all of your application's prereqs, it then installs your application- which we refer to as the caboose since it is the last thing the Bootstrapper touches.
Usually it will be an MSI or clickOnce .application file, but if you use MSBuild to generate your Bootstrapper the caboose could be anything, from a .BAT file to a text file.
Bud Light, (speaking as someone who started out on ATT System V) who really cares what unix had or has and for how long. I mean you really waste too much gray matter making comments like that. I think that is a great little tool and should really help developers and the users. Lets give people some credit for their hard work instead of making wise cracks all the time.
I didn't realise the lead singer from Weezer worked at Microsoft!
Just one thing: Chris Smith speaks like Todd from www.oddtodd.com.
"So I wake up and get some cooofeee... I then run the booostrapppper....".
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