Which one to use, Visual Studio Installer or Inno Setup?

6
votes

I asked some questions about Inno Setup and .NET Framework installation. Now I am thinking whether is it better to use Visual Studio Installer or Inno Setup?

Which of the two do you think is better and more functional for this type of problem, and in general which is better to use for installer creation?

2
visual-studio-2010installationinno-setup
It might help prevent a flood of purely subjective, "I prefer x" answers if you edit your question to provide some more details on your particular application and any specialized tasks that you need to perform during the setup process. – Cody Gray
Disregarding of what other answers are, you should be aware that VS setup project was retired by Microsoft, and this is obviously not a good choice for long-term project... – Yan Sklyarenko
Hmm, somebody needs to tell the crew that worked on VS2010. – Hans Passant

2 Answers

6
votes

In general, Inno Setup is easier and more reliable, but if you must ship an MSI, use Visual Studio. See here for installing .NET with Inno.

0
votes

Visual Studio Installer is retiring in 2010 so for future use it is not suitable. Also there is a tool called InstallShied Limited Edition in VS 2010 for creating installers (based on some other technology).

If you want to create installers directly in Visual Studio try this extension called Visual & Installer: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/5e57fe9a-ae5d-4740-a1c3-7a8e278e105b

It supports Inno Setup and NSIS (Nullsoft Installer, both are free and open sourced) and VS 2012 and VS 2012 are already supported so it looks fine.