Install Your System with VB.NET 2.0

Like everything else in VB.NET, installing your system has changed. In this article, I'm going to give you an overview of the new options available. Look for detailed coverage of the two major new options (the first one, ClickOnce, entirely new in VB.NET 2005) in subsequent articles.

In this article, we go over all the options. We discuss how they fit into Microsoft's new, network oriented strategy and we take a look backward to add some perspective.

"Deployment" (the nerd word for giving your customers a way to install your systems) has not always moved in sync with Visual Basic. VB 6 started out with what is called the Package and Deployment Wizard. About Visual Basic features an article to get you up to speed on it: Using the Package and Deployment Wizard . Part way through the Visual Basic 6 product life, Microsoft switched gears and brought out Windows Installer. We're up to version 3.1 on that now. Windows Installer is still the end result of creating a deployment solution in VB.NET, but the way you create it is completely new. About Visual Basic offers this article that covers Visual Studio Installer (the GUI front end for Windows Installer in VB 6.0): Getting Your System Out.

Visual Studio Installer for VB 6 did introduce the concept of the Setup project. The main advantage is integration. The VB 6 Package and Deployment Wizard was more of a stand-alone tool that you could access from within Visual Studio. But with the Visual Studio Installer, you created a deployment solution as another project with a different template inside Visual Studio. This idea has moved across to VB.NET. There are new tricks involved in VB.NET, but Setup is just another project in your VB.NET solution space.