How do I create a MSI for my web application?

Question

I have a web application, where the UI is in seperate folder and solution, the middle tier as well as the data layer in different folders and solutions.

Now I need to create a MSI for my web application. Until now we have been using deployment engine, but now we have been asked to do a MSI as the new server does not support deployment engine.

Usually we create MSI for a windows application, where we take the EXE as the primary output. Now how do I create the MSI in this situation.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

regards cmrhema

Answer 1

Click in your solution and Add a new project: a Web Setup Project

Then add as output your Website.

Important Note:

This will add all the code (.cs / .vb files) and will protect nothing at all, to protect your code (the compiled one) you need to add the Visual Studio Extension Web Deploy Project

Then, right-click in your Website and choose the new option, and add this project as the input of the Setup.

Answer 2

Although the learning curve will be steeper I would recommend using the WIX toolset to create your Windows Installer files - http://wix.sourceforge.net

See also https://stackoverflow.com/tags/wix/info