I've a Console Application
project in a Visual Studio Solution
. This application, called here for semplicity MyApplication.exe, is nothing but an host of a WCF Service.
I need an installer for install my application on the target machine, so I download the Microsoft Visual Studio Installer Projects
extension. I collected all the files I want to be copied into the Application Folder but I want that the installer even registers my service as a Windows Service.
For this goal, I imported the InstallUtil.exe
just like shown on the below picture. I created the nested extra folders (Windows Folder -> Microsoft.NET -> Framework64 -> v4.030319) in order to reflect the actual structure of the target environment.
Then I created the Custom Action
like this under the Commit
node:
with the following Arguments:
"[TARGETDIR]MyApplication.exe"
I tried the generated setup and I noticed that all the files are copied but the service is not installed (I don't see it on the MSC list).
So, below my questions:
- Where and what am I doing wrong?
- Is there any log I can check?
- In which way I can uninstall the service, if it was already installed previously?
- Frankly speaking, I expected something more customizable.. For example additional checkbox related to my application or something that the user can manage at installation time. If my
App.config
contains a KeyValue [Server="localhost"] is there a way to customize it at installation time with a popup to the user: 'Where is your server?" and update my config file with the information prompted by the user?
Limits: Visual Studio Installer Projects have many limitations (short version, Chris Painter).
Alternative Tools: There are many other tools, some of which are free.
Links: